


we're writing the book of love

by kaielle



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: (of a sort), Accidental Voyeurism, Bedsharing, Character Death Fix, Dreams and Nightmares, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), kinda a roadtrip fic if you squint, two grown men being embarrassing, vaguely supernatural elements bc it's just more fun that way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2020-10-20 16:35:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20678507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaielle/pseuds/kaielle
Summary: Richie searches for his glasses under the water.  He grasps a hand instead.In which Eddie Kaspbrak comes back, but he comes back a little different.





	1. so i swam into the sewers

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm incapable of stealing titles from anyone else, title is from Richard Siken's "I Had a Dream About You."
> 
> _I went to the riverbed to wait for you to show up._  
_You didn't show up._  
_I kept waiting._

He left him. Eddie saved his life and Richie just left him there. It’s all he can think about. There will be no body for a funeral, no body for a grave, no body for his friends and family to say goodbye to. They couldn’t even do that for him. What are they going to tell people? What are they going to tell his _wife_? That he got trapped in a collapsing building? That there was an accident? Or worse, are they going to just say nothing at all, leave him to be presumed missing? That hurts Richie the most — that they could all do that to Eddie, turn the sacrifice of his bloody, broken body into nothing. His death should matter. There should be a monument to him in this godforsaken town, to the terrified boy who grew into a terrified man, to the outcast that saved all his bullies’ children, to the man who burned away the dark. But instead his sacrifice is a secret, and his body is gone, and Eddie Kaspbrak doesn’t even get a death — he just disappears.

Richie’s chest cracks open like a vase and spills out into the quarry. His sorrow ebbs out into the water, growing and growing until it fills the whole basin. In return the water rushes in through the gaps and cleans him out, washing away his pain until he’s left numb. His friends press in all around him, Bill’s hand slipping into his, Bev’s arm around his shoulders, but all he can feel is the absence. It feels like the culmination of his whole life, like every shitty thing that’s ever happened to him has led him here, to this cold, shadowy place beyond humanity: the thick, syrupy childhood nights spent with his whiskey-soaked mother; the slurs drilled into his skin by bullies, friends, family, lovers; the pain he’s lived with his whole life that crystallized under pressure and time into comedy, into other people’s joy; the bone-aching loneliness that dogs his heels everywhere he goes, relentless and restless, whispering to him to fill the void with sex and bourbon and sleep. Stan’s head slipping beneath bloody water. And now. And now.

He can’t even think it. He can’t even fucking think it.

Eventually even his tears empty. They can’t stay here forever, he knows that. He’d give anything for them to leave him, to leave the quarry and run back to Neibolt Street, to dig through the rubble and find the well. To go back to Eddie. Eddie, who he loved and forgot and then loved again. Eddie, who he left behind. Eddie, who died alone.

But his friends are too good to leave him. He thinks from the slight press of their hands against him, gentle as gravity and twice as heavy, that they know what he’d do if they weren’t here. They’re keeping him grounded, making sure that in the midst of his grief he doesn’t do something stupid.

Good fucking luck, he thinks, and if the voice in his head sounds like Eddie, well. There are worse things.

“I lost my glasses,” he tells them, and they all disappear under the water to look for them, splitting off to different sections of the quarry. He sinks down and lets the water consume him, the coolness of it pressing against the raw skin of his face like a balm. For a moment he just lets himself drift, the desperate shriveled feeling in his chest from too little air overriding the deeper pain that consumes him. He opens his eyes to the blurry blue world of the water, his chest burning terribly, and thinks that it would be easy to just… stop. He hopes it was this easy for Eddie, that the weariness of living softened into sleepiness and he just drifted away. Maybe I’ll ask him, he thinks, and then he sees a figure darting through the water and remembers his friends. His friends who fought off an otherworldly entity with him, who mixed their blood with his, who have already lost two people they loved and don’t deserve to be ruined a third time.

He forces himself to twist around and start hunting for his glasses. His life is meaningless on its own; he figured that out pretty early on in his adulthood. His friends give him meaning, though. The love they have for him gives him a reason to stay, to push on at least a little longer, so he eases shut the door he’d opened to the place Eddie resides in, his lungs shrinking smaller and smaller. It’s not forever, he thinks, hand slipping from the doorknob. It’s just not now.

His fingers brush across something along the silty bed of the lake. His glasses. He goes to grab them and feels fingers slot through his own and clutch him tightly. Startled, he tries to yank his hand back, certain it’s Pennywise, unkillable as he’d always feared. A figure looms in front of him, blurred down to a flat silhouette by Richie’s lack of glasses and the sediment-ridden water. It feels like a wire is tied around his heart, slowly, torturously squeezing it in two. He can feel the lack of air in his lungs like a fire burning through him. It’s funny how willing to die he was a minute ago and how terrified he is now.

The figure tugs on his arm, yanking him towards the surface, and Richie is helpless to fight it, his survival instincts taking over. He breaks the surface with a big shuddering gulp of breath, sucking down one after another, spots flickering across his vision. Something touches his nose and he jerks back before he realizes its his glasses, the arms of the frames pushing through his hair and hooking around his ears. It takes a second for the spots to vanish enough for him to see clearly, and when they do its nearly enough to do his heart in for good, the wire slicing clean through in a bright flash of pain.

Eddie.

He’s treading water in front of him, dark hair plastered to his head, black eyes staring back at him. Drops fall from the spikes of his eyelashes. The freckles dappling his cheeks and nose in a faint wash of color are so perfect and real that Richie feels a tear slip down his cheek. The hand entwined in his own twitches and Richie squeezes it, hard, desperate to feel the solidity of it, the realness.

“Please be real,” he says, voice trembling in his throat. “Please be real, or I swear to fucking God—”

The thing that looks like Eddie launches itself at him, wrapping its arms around his shoulders and nearly squeezing the life out of him. It presses its face into his neck and trembles. Helpless, Richie squeezes it back, pressing his cheek into the wraith’s wet hair and pushing his palms against the sides of its ribcage, feeling the spellwork of a pulse thrumming underneath. It feels like Eddie.

“It’s me,” it says, voice raspy like a man who’d just survived a hole being torn through his chest. Richie knows its just a trick, that Eddie died and this is just the manifestation of Hell he’s been running from since he was a kid, that he’s embracing his own death, but he can’t help the green sprout of hope that grows inside of him.

“You died,” he chokes, squeezing the impostor, the ghost, the devil as close to him as he can. Any closer and this vision of his first and only love will be pushed into his skin to live in his chest where it belongs. God help him, but he tries.

“It’s me,” it says again, and it pushes away from him just enough to grab his face and look him in the eye. Eddie, not-Eddie, whatever they are, they’re crying, eyes glossy like obsidian, like eyes he’s seen a million times, eyes he’s seen in his dreams. “Richie it’s really me, I’m here.”

He wants to believe it so bad. “Eddie...”

“It’s me, Shitface.” And there’s that crinkly smile that’s worn a groove into his heart. “I promise.”

“Fuck,” Richie sobs, and then he gathers Eddie close. _Eddie_.

They stay like that for a short eternity, legs kicking between each other under the surface to keep them afloat, before the bubble pops.

“Oh my God.”

Richie can tell by the voice that it’s Bev. He can’t pull away from Eddie enough to look up. He won’t.

“Is that…” She gets choked up. “Is that—”

“Eddie?” Ben breathes.

Richie feels one of Eddie’s hands lift from his back. “Hi guys.”

Ritchie starts to laugh. It’s real. It’s fucking real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i haven't needed a proper fix-it fic this badly in a really long time. strap in kids. it's going to be a significantly less bumpy ride.


	2. i will come back from the dead for you

When Richie finally reconnects the wires of his brain, the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, “How?”

He sees something shudder behind Eddie’s eyes.

“I don’t… I don’t really know.” He looks away, his eyebrows cinching. He keeps opening and closing his mouth, the words knotting up on his tongue. “I was… Well, I guess I was— dead.”

The atmosphere changes instantly, hardening into something cold and brittle like ice. Bev’s jaw trembles, and Bill’s fists clench at his sides. Richie feels like a ghost walked through him, his insides going cold and the hair on his arms standing up.

Eddie pinches at his arms, agitated. “But… wherever I was, there were people there. Kids. I knew some of them: Betty Ripsom, Patrick Hockstetter. Georgie.”

Richie sees Bill’s spine stiffen out of the corner of his eye. Mike wraps an arm around his shoulder.

“They spoke to me. Told me that we had freed them, that they could finally move on. They were grateful to us for what we’d done. God, you guys, there must have been a thousand of them. A thousand different lives ended by that… _thing_.” Eddie scrubs his palm against his eye. Richie flinches, thinking about Eddie as one of the thousand. “They said that place — the cave Pennywise lived in — was saturated with energy from all the life that had been spilled there, that Pennywise’s death had galvanized it. They were all too far gone — they didn’t have bodies to return to anymore, but me, I’d only been… _away_ for a few minutes. They used the last of whatever life they had to bring me back. I woke up at the mouth of the sewer by the storm drain, like I’d just floated out of there with the run-off.”

Everyone is silent for a long moment, their feeble minds trying to cobble together everything Eddie just told them into something logical, something that makes sense. It’s hard, though. Richie supposes it isn’t too far a leap from carnivorous alien clowns to ghosts and spiritual resurrections. It’s not a leap any of them were in any way prepared to make, though. The whiplash he feels from his unbearable grief evaporating within the span of an hour is intense. He feels like he can’t quite make heads or tails of anything, like everything is real and a trick of the light all at once.

“You had a hole ripped through your chest, Eds,” Richie says, quiet. Eddie turns to look at him, and Richie flashes violently back to the glazed way they’d looked after the life had left them. He looks away, trying to contain the pang of overwhelming loss that reverberates through him at the memory. “Yeah, you had a body to go back to, but it wasn’t exactly in working condition.”

Eddie swallows. Richie watches the motion of it as it drags down his throat. Then Eddie reaches for the collar of his dirty, water-logged shirt and pulls it down to his sternum, revealing the wound. Richie flinches instinctively, the image of Pennywise’s leg spearing through him flickering like a reel of film across his mind. When it passes, though, he sees that the flesh that had been torn open and leaking Eddie’s lifeblood like a burst pipe is unmarred. There’s not so much as a scab left behind. It’s like it never even happened.

“The kids,” Eddie explains. He keeps shifting his eyes anxiously from person to person, his voice strained and shaky. “They, um. They fixed me. I think.”

Bill jolts and throws up on a shrub.

“I thought throwing up was my thing,” Richie jokes. It’s half-hearted at best. Ben gives him a stiff smile, eyes occupied with concern.

Bill turns back to them after a moment, swiping the back of his hand across his mouth. Bev rubs a soothing hand across his back.

Richie and Mike meet eyes across the group. Richie doesn’t like the look on his face.

“I’m so glad you’re back, Eddie, but I…” Mike scrubs a hand across his face. “I can’t help but worry…”

Richie’s body goes rigid. “Worry about what?” he asks darkly, a hard edge to his voice. He can feel the anxious energy radiating off of Eddie beside him.

“I know you don’t want to hear this Rich, but think about it: Pennywise dies, and then his life force is used to bring Eddie back to life? Doesn’t that seem _worrisome_ to you?”

“No,” Richie says, simple as that. Eddie is Eddie. He’s never known anybody the way he knows him. He knows Eddie’s worst memories, his best ones, the sounds he makes when he’s sleeping, the specific pattern of his moles, the way his laugh sounds when he thinks something’s so funny he’s close to pissing himself, the way his voice thins when he lies. As kids, he used to devour every little new thing he learned about Eddie and tuck it away in secret. When he was alone, he would unfold those memories and go over them over and over again until they were soft and worn like well-read love letters. If Eddie was wrong, well. He’d be the first to know.

“I don’t want it to be true any more than you do, Richie, but we have to at least consider it. We all love Eddie, but if we accidentally bring Pennywise back to Derry and people get hurt—”

“Jesus, Mike, this isn’t _Alien_,” Richie sneers. “It’s not like a little clown is going to jack-in-the-box out of his fucking chest.”

Eddie teeters next to him and reaches out for Richie’s arm to balance himself, his fingernails digging hard into his skin. Guilt blooms like a wound within him. Fucking Trashmouth. He’s chronically insensitive. It’s a goddamn disease.

“I think Mike is right,” Bill says, the lines around his eyes gone hard.

Richie’s surprised by how much it hurts. Bill hasn’t had any sway over him in almost three decades, but a few days back in Derry and it’s like the brother Richie’s always looked up to has ratted him out to their parents. It’s a betrayal. He thinks about everything Richie and Eddie have done for him: fighting off Bowers, helping him look for Georgie, following him time and time again into the clutches of a child-murdering monster. All that and Bill still left Eddie behind. All that and he still wants to turn Eddie away, send him back to die — again. Richie’s anger burns so hot it blisters. “Fuck you.”

Bill’s face scrunches up in that uncomfortable way it does when he’s at odds with one of them. “Richie—”

“No. An hour ago Eddie was dead. My best friend fucking risked his life for mine — for all of your sorry asses — and he fucking _died_. And now he’s back and you, what? Want to lock him back in the sewer? Cut him up on a table and see what’s inside? _Fuck_ you.”

Ben steps forward, placating. “No one’s saying that, Richie. It just… I mean, after everything we’ve gone through trying to get rid of this thing, don’t we owe it to Derry, to ourselves, to make sure it’s gone for good? That this isn’t a trick? We should just be a little cautious about this, that’s all.”

“What’s there to be cautious about? It’s Eddie. The same hypochondriac loser you’ve known since you were eleven years old. The same crazy little shit that killed a monster for you. There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“How about we let Eddie talk about himself demeaningly?” Eddie pipes up, laughing weakly.

Bill turns to him. “Eddie, you know we love you, that we’re so happy you’re back, but… It’s just a little scary, is all. There’s no harm in being careful and making sure we’re doing the right thing, right? Taking things slow?”

“What do you mean ‘taking things slow?’” Richie demands.

Bill’s eyes cut to him. “I don’t think he should go back into town. Not until we’re sure he’s completely himself.”

Silence falls over them like a cloud of smoke, thick and suffocating. Richie’s mind keeps whirring and sticking, unable to believe what’s happening. He looks at all of them, his eyes drifting among their pinched, worried faces. “Friends wouldn’t do that,” he says slowly. The anger inside of him turns molten. “This whole time I thought we were all something bigger than just ‘childhood pals,’ something better. Now I’m wondering if Pennywise was the only thing that brought us together.”

“Richie, please,” Mike pleads. “Don’t let your personal feelings put the whole town in danger. Too many people have—”

Richie punches him in the jaw. Mike goes down hard, his tailbone slamming into the dirt. Bill rushes to his side — of course he does — and Bev turns on Richie, anger and conflict warring on her face, while Ben hesitates between Richie and Mike.

Richie’s chest heaves, his shoulders rising and falling. There’s a little fluttery delicate thing that lives in his chest that goes frantic when the danger of being revealed rears its head. It beats its paper wings against his ribs, desperate, and it makes him feel like a kid in an arcade again, the lily-white innocence of childhood love rotting into rancid decay. It turns him wild, brittle, wide-eyed. His knuckles pulse from the hit. “You don’t know _shit_,” he hisses at Mike, his bones starting to shake.

Eddie tugs on his wrist. “Richie, stop.”

Richie turns to look at him and finds his face white and his eyes sad. His stomach drops.

“They’re right,” Eddie says softly. “It’s better if I leave town for a little while. Safer.”

“No, they’re not. You’re the same person you always have been.”

Eddie studies his face, his eyebrows drawing together in that quietly anxious way they always used to when he was trying to put on a brave face. “How do you know?”

Richie stares at him, taking in his grimy hair and the speckles of dried blood scattered amongst his freckles. “I know you,” he says.

Eddie’s eyes go soft.

Bev lays a hand on Richie’s arm. He pulls his eyes away from Eddie to look at her. “We all care about Eddie, Richie. We just can’t be selfish. Not with this. It’d be best if he stayed outside of town for a couple days, just until we have a plan.”

The thing is, the non-monkey part of his brain knows that they’re all being sensible. The predominant part of him is the stupid part, though, and it would rather cut off his own hand than be parted from Eddie again. And if this goes South — if one day Eddie turns around and bites his head off his shoulders — then it’ll be okay because his last hope for happiness will have withered and died and he won’t have anything to live for anyway. So. It’s a win-win.

He turns back to Eddie. “What do you want to do?”

Eddie doesn’t even seem to think about it. “I’ll leave.”

It’s funny how he’s always such a little bitch baby, except for when it really matters. Richie’s heart squeezes in his chest. “Cool. Let’s go on a roadtrip then. I’m thinking Vegas. Or maybe one of the Florida swamps. Whatever the dirtiest place in America is.”

“Your laundry bin full of crusty socks, I’d imagine.”

“Where else was I supposed to turn after your mother died and left me hanging? We had several standing appointments lined up, you know.”

Eddie shoves him, huffing out a small laugh. Richie thought he was never going to hear that sound again. It makes him lightheaded.

“Richie, are you sure you should go?” Bev asks him, expression heavy with concern.

He shrugs. “He risked his life for mine. Least I can do is return the favor.”

“Be smart about this, Rich,” Bill says from Mike’s side. The shame starts to ebb cold and sickly into the pit of his stomach. He avoids Mike’s gaze. “I don’t want either of you getting hurt.”

“Right. ” He turns back to Eddie, who has a tired, flimsy smile twitching at his mouth, and slings an arm across his shoulders. “See you losers later,” he says over his shoulder, shepherding Eddie off in the direction the motel at the edge of town where his car is parked.

“Where are we going, Spaghetti? I’m thinking your recent resurrection should at least get us a honeymoon suite somewhere. Maybe even the presidential if we talk it up right.”

Eddie huffs out a wheezy laugh. He goes quiet for a moment, then: “My family has a cabin up in the mountains. It passed down to me when my mom died. There’s a spare key hidden under a loose plank on the porch. We could grab our things from our cars and just… drive.” There’s a nervous tinge to his voice, as if Richie could say no.

“Sounds perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cue the romantic dramedy montage music*


	3. struck in the witched hours of want

Richie stops for Taco Bell on the way there and Eddie nearly shits his pants.

“I just got this body back and you want me to fill it with Taco Bell? I might as well guzzle down a bottle of lighter fluid and dry-swallow a lit match.”

“I think you would have to dry-swallow it, Eds. It’s a fucking match.”

Richie gets whatever their latest indigestion innovation is while Eddie gets mini quesadillas. They share one slightly flat soda between them, Eddie’s hygiene worries suspiciously quiet from one sip to the next. Richie asks him if he’s feeling alright, to which Eddie replies, smiling softly, “Never better.”

About two hours into their drive, when they’re half an hour away from the cabin, Eddie remembers that food is a human necessity and that no one’s stayed in the cabin in a decade, so Richie pulls over at the first grocery store they come across. They wander around the aisles with a shopping cart, picking up miscellaneous things and dropping them in. Lucky Charms, garlic bread, a variety of frozen pizzas. Eddie’s sweet tooth hasn’t changed; he tosses a pint of Ben & Jerry’s at Richie’s chest. Richie runs the cart into Eddie’s heels once accidentally, and then he does it five more times on purpose. While Richie strolls purposefully past the alcohol aisle, Eddie grabs a bottle of wine, then another, then another, and carefully lays them out in the top section of the cart.

“Whoa, there, Wine Mom. Are the kids out of the house for the weekend?”

Eddie jabs an elbow into his ribs. “I think it’s fair to say that I’ve had a pretty shit few days. I deserve to get blindingly, incandescently drunk, don’t you think?”

He can’t fault the logic in that.

They check out and pack it all into the car. Then it’s just a short drive up the beginnings of a mountain to the cabin.

Eddie cranes his neck behind him at something out the window. “I recognize that mailbox. It should be the next left.”

“I don’t see any houses.”

“Just— trust me. Take the next left.”

When he lays it out like that, Richie doesn’t really have a choice. So he takes the next left, even though it looks more like a wagon path from the Oregon Trail than a road and the branches of trees that reach out to clasp limbs above them scrape the top of his car. They drive for almost five minutes and still there’s no house.

“Are you sure we took the right turn?” he asks.

“I’m sure. It’s just a really long driveway.”

“Eddie, we’ve been driving for over two miles.”

“Yeah, well, my grandpa built it as a private retreat.”

“Was your grandpa the Zodiac Killer?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Idiot.”

The cabin springs into view then. It’s not exactly what Richie had been expecting. He thought it would be one of those lincoln log-looking buildings with an aggressively wooden façade and a derelict shed collapsing off to the side. In reality the cabin is a small brown house with large dusty windows and a wrap-around porch. There’s a chimney crawling up the side of it made up of beautiful stacked stones. With the sun filtering in through the trees stretching up high all around them and the mountains at their back, it’s lovely.

They step out of the car.

“Welcome to the home of my least miserable family vacations,” Eddie says.

“Wow.” The air up here is so clean it slices through his lungs like a knife. He breathes in the sting of it, his eyes drifting closed, and opens them to find Eddie staring at him. “What?” he asks.

Eddie just smiles and shakes his head. “Nothing. Come on, help me find the key.”

He follows Eddie up the rickety steps to the porch and watches as he toes a various planks, the skin around his eyes lined with intent. “There should be a loose board around here somewhere.”

Richie crouches down and starts pressing on the planks. He’s covered about a quarter of the deck and gained approximately three splinters by the time Eddie lets out a little sound of victory and Richie turns around to find him with a shitty lobster keychain in his hand and a brilliant smile on his face. Something old shakes loose in Richie’s chest, the dust of neglect drifting out into his lungs and making his throat itch.

Eddie walks over to open the door and Richie takes the opportunity to put some space between them, his heart beating heavy against his ribs. He hurries down the steps and off towards the car, taking his time as he loads up his dufflebag and most of the groceries onto his arms. He leans into the trunk and pauses to catch his breath. His pulse refuses to slow down.

It’s like time travel, being around Eddie again. A few days ago he was a completely different person: successful comedian Richie Tozier, the downtrodden jester of LA. Decently happy, though the loneliness ebbed and flowed. Some nights it was manageable, others it drove him feral. He’d hop in a cab to the nearest comedy club, the nearest bar, any distraction that might make the yawning ache inside of him feel less present, less demanding. And then he came back to Derry and it was like he’d been thrown back into his childhood — into every terrible, shitty feeling he’d ever felt, flooding back into him after decades of being dammed away.

The strangest part of it all was the intensity of it — he’d been a teenager the last time he was grappling with these emotions, feeling everything in avalanches because that was the only way he could process things at that age. Now he was a fully grown adult with almost thirty more years of emotional distance under his belt. Being thrown into emotions this consuming was harder now; he didn’t know how to cope with them anymore. There had been a time in his life where the twinging ache of love he’d buried deep inside himself had been his constant companion, as inseparable from himself as his shadow. Then one day he’d moved out of Derry and the pain just… evaporated. Blew out of him like smoke alongside his memories. It seems impossible to him now that he could have forgotten this: the bubbling cocktail of hope and shame in his gut, the flutter in his throat when a flash of teeth and dimples was directed his way.

Love.

“Need some help?”

He startles and bangs his head against the trunk. He lets out a pained hiss. “_Christ_ that hurt.”

A hand settles warm on his back. He looks over to find Eddie a few inches away, the concern in his eyes belied by his twitching mouth. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I think I just lost like four brain cells.”

“That’s concerning considering you only had five to begin with.”

Richie laughs and shoves him. He regrets it, though, because it means Eddie’s hand slips from between his shoulders. It’s all made better when Eddie grabs him by his shoulders and turns him around to face him, the grocery bags sliding down Richie’s forearms to gather heavy at his wrists. Eddie reaches a hand up to his hairline, the pads of his fingers brushing light as a breeze across his skin. Richie freezes up, his heart jumping into his throat. He and Eddie meet eyes for just a moment as Eddie pushes his fingers up into his hair. Every inch of Richie’s skin tingles with the feeling of it, ripples of sensation emanating from that one small point of contact. It triggers a full body shudder and sends a white-hot bolt of feeling through his gut. Eddie feels it, there’s no chance doesn’t. His cheeks burn with shame.

“I think you’ll live,” Eddie says softly, his fingers trailing down to trace the line of Richie’s brow. Richie breathes in hard through his nose. They stare at each other for a long moment, Eddie’s dark eyes flicking between his own. Richie can’t help it. It feels just like it did back then, this thing living inside him, back when he spent his nights staring at his bedroom ceiling tearing himself to pieces over the loudness of his desire, the need that clawed up his insides like a rabid dog. His gaze falls from Eddie’s eyes to the feint freckles scattered across his nose to the shadow above his lips to his lips themselves. A terrifying gravity keeps him rooted in place, unable to move, to look away. Thirty years and he’s here again, against all odds, against killer clowns and death itself. Thirty years and the only thing separating him from the thing he’s wanted since he was old enough to know what wanting was is an inch of breath.

If he just leaned—

Something clatters to the ground. They both startle, jolting in place. Eddie yanks his hand to his chest. They look down.

It’s a can of tomatoes. One of the plastic bags currently cutting off the circulation of Richie’s arms ripped beneath the weight of its contents and the can fell through. A bag of potato chips is trying to follow it, the corner poking through the hole.

“Fuck, sorry,” Eddie says, stepping back. For what? Richie thinks. For the waiting? For the touching?

“Don’t be,” he says, and he means it more than he’s maybe ever meant anything. A command. A plea.

“We should—” Eddie throws a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the house, his eyes trained on the open space next to Richie’s head. Richie just nods and sets off for the house while Eddie goes to collect whatever’s left in the trunk.

The cabin is nice. There’s a decade’s worth of dust covering the floor, but in typical Kaspbrak fashion the furniture has all been covered in protective sheets. He drops the groceries off in the kitchen and tries to rub the bloodless lines out of his wrists left by the bags. Eddie takes a long time gathering his things out of the car, so Richie wanders the house. The living room consists of the fireplace, a coffee table, and a dilapidated couch, no television in sight. There’s a yellowed volume of Ladies Home Journal curling on the coffee table, but that seems about it for entertainment. Across from the living room is a dining table with a bowl of wax fruit at its center. That must’ve been Mrs. Kaspbrak’s touch — there was one just like it in Eddie’s old house. At the back of the house there’s two doors, which Richie assumes at first lead to two separate bedrooms. The one on the left opens to a small bedroom, the full bed in the center taking up most of the room. He spies some sort of Raggedy Anne doll propped against the pillows and backs out of there, shutting the door firmly behind him.

He opens the other door to find not a bedroom but a small bathroom and the gears of his mind grind to a halt. There can’t be only one bedroom. Eddie vacationed here with his parents as a kid — he had to have slept somewhere. Richie walks around the edges of the house, searching for a hidden door or staircase. He remembers that houses like these sometimes have crawlspaces so he starts folding back the rugs, looking for hidden hatches that might lead to a shitty second bedroom. He doesn’t turn up anything, though, and he doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Eddie invited him here. Eddie deliberately chose to stay in this one-bedroom hell and invited Richie along. Did that mean something? Or did he just forget? Maybe he wasn’t thinking straight at the time. Or maybe he was.

Or maybe Richie’s just lovesick and attaching meaning to every single little thing Eddie does. He flops down on the couch and sighs, sending a massive cloud of dust billowing up from the sheet. He’s still coughing when Eddie walks in with his bag and the remainder of the groceries. He pulls a face at all the dust. “That’s disgusting.”

“I’m thinking of bottling it up for my shrine to your mother. Dead skin ages like fine wine. Might help tide me over on lonely nights.”

Eddie scoffs, dropping his groceries next to Richie’s on the counter. “Now I remember why we used to call you Trashmouth. That’s fucking nasty, Rich.”

“Hey, I made a whole career out of this trash mouth. America loves me. Parts of Canada, too.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and starts taking things out of the bags. Richie gets up to help him. They start arranging things into perishables and non-perishables, cans and boxes and bags. They’re quiet for a long moment, but it’s the nice sort of quiet. Silence between old friends. It’s a comfort he didn’t know he’d been missing.

“So, uh. All these lonely nights of yours,” Eddie starts, his eyes flicking up to Richie’s. “How come you never got married?”

Richie laughs. “God, can you imagine?” He expects Eddie to laugh at the very idea of it, but he just gets a small flimsy smile in response.

“So what’s your deal then? Afraid of commitment? Hung up on an old flame?”

It’s just an off the cuff remark. He doesn’t mean anything by it. Richie knows this. It still stops his heart cold.

It takes him a second to pull himself together. “Something like that, yeah.”

Eddie nudges him with an elbow. “Come on, Richie. I thought I was your best friend.” He gives him a shit-eating grin. “At least, that’s what you said to Bill earlier.”

Ritchie frowns. “You are my best friend.”

Now Eddie laughs. “Come on, dude. You’re a bigshot comedian now. I’m sure you’ve got more people trying to be your friend than you can put up with. And it hasn’t been thirty years since you’ve seen them.”

“Those people aren’t my friends. They like the _lifestyle_ of being my friend. The perks. But they don’t know me. Not like you.”

“Do I know you?” Eddie asks. There’s a nervousness about him. A sad sort of worry. “I knew eleven-year-old you. I knew the loudmouth moron that lived down the street. I don’t know if I know this you.”

“You knew the only version of me that was worth knowing,” he says earnestly. He fiddles with one of the cans, digging at the edge of the label. “The most honest version of me. As far as I care, the last thirty years have just been a footnote on that chapter of my life. The good years.”

“I feel the same way,” Eddie says. “I was my best self when I was with you guys. Once we all grew apart and left Derry I juts sort of… shrunk. I got into risk analysis because my mother pushed me into it. I moved to NYC because Myra wanted to. All the things you guys taught me about bravery and being true to myself just melted away. And then all I was left with was the shitty parts of myself I’d always hated.”

They’re quiet for a moment, ruminating on the years of pain and boredom they have between them.

“God, we really peaked in middle school, huh?” Richie says.

“We might go down in history as the two most pathetic men in history,” Eddie agrees.

“Losers ‘til the very end.”

“Cheers to that.”

He thinks that’s the end of the conversation, that they’ve both bared enough of their souls to do the necessary ritual that gets their friendship back on its feet. Eddie’s always been like a dog with a bone, skilled at sniffing out the things Richie keeps hidden and pawing at them incessantly until Richie breaks. Well. Skilled up to a point.

“Really, though,” he says, and Richie braces himself for the worst, “how come there’s no wife, no girlfriend?”

Richie looks away. The combination of Eddie’s blindness and his own cowardice is nearly enough to kill him. “There just… isn’t.”

“You’re the funniest, most loyal person I’ve ever met, Rich. Surely that’s still gotta count for something these days.”

“There have been contenders, sure.” Not many. He dated a girl in college who reminded him of Beverley, but he never could rouse the feelings in himself she wanted from him and the sex was always awkward. He kept things pretty casual for the rest of his twenties and the beginning of his thirties until he met a screenwriter at an event for one of his televised comedy specials. David. He was funny and handsome and emotionally intelligent enough to help Richie with his issues when he needed it and leave them be when he didn’t. They were together for four years and even lived together, but it fell apart in the end because David couldn’t bear Richie’s closeted shame any longer. Richie understood, but he couldn’t see any way out, not after everything Derry had done to him, so David packed up his things and moved in with a friend in San Francisco. Richie learned his lesson after that and kept his burdens to himself, only dating casually and taking people home for the night. He figured his stars just weren’t aligned that way, that a long-term relationship just wasn’t in the cards for him, and that was okay. So long as he found other means of staving off the loneliness, what did it matter?

It was so much easier when he couldn’t remember Eddie and this gnawing in his chest. Now it matters. It matters a lot.

“Just contenders?” Eddie asks.

Richie can’t take anymore of this. “Why do you care so much?”

Eddie blinks at him, his mouth opening and closing. “I’m just— catching up.”

He looks away. It’s harder than he remembers, walking this line between friendship and the feelings spilling out on all sides inside of him. He doesn’t know how he did it back then.

“Right,” he says. “Well, what about you and Myra then? What’s the story there?”

Shutters board behind Eddie’s eyes. “Uh.” He laughs nervously. “A coworker introduced us. We dated for a year and then she told me if I didn’t propose that she would leave me. So. I proposed. We got married six months later and moved to the city. …That’s that, I guess.”

“Jesus, Eddie. That’s the bleakest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Eddie just shrugs and stares at his hands where they sit on the counter.

Richie can’t believe he’s about to ask this, but he can’t leave it unsaid: “Do you… do you love her?”

A look slowly rolls across Eddie’s face, like he’s thinking hard about it. “It’s… a mutually beneficial relationship.”

“Fuck, dude.”

“It’s not so bad. There’s always somebody to come home to, you know? Always somebody who’ll pick up the phone.”

Richie sees it then: the familiar weariness in Eddie’s eyes. The marks of loneliness on him. It’s like looking in a mirror.

“I’m sorry I forgot you,” he says quietly. He means: I’m sorry I wasn’t there to pick up the phone. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to tell you how wonderful you are. I’m sorry I was a coward and left. I’m sorry.

Eddie’s eyes meet his. His fingers splay out over the granite, his pinky a breadth away from Richie’s. “I’m sorry, too.”

They sit like that until the sun begins to set. The ice cream melts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tomatoes kill, kids. tomatoes kill.


	4. wish i had the courage to tell you what i really dream of

After they get the groceries put away and settle in, Eddie offers to cook dinner. Richie can’t help the laugh that stumbles out of him.

“What?” Eddie asks, his eyebrows creasing.

“Nothing,” Richie smiles, shaking his head. “It’s just the last meal you made me was overcooked ramen.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, unimpressed. “We were eleven.”

“I gotta be honest, I imagined Myra did all the cooking.”

Eddie laughs at that. “I was alone a long time before Myra came around. It was either learn how to cook or starve, so.”

“Fair enough.”

Eddie goes about opening and closing the cabinets, hunting down pots and pans, a cutting board, knives.

“Do you want any help?” Richie asks.

Eddie gives him a scrutinizing look. “Will you fuck it up?”

Richie laughs, pressing an affronted hand to his chest. “Why, Mr. Kaspbrak, how could you say such a thing?”

Eddie squints at him. “Your general incompetency doesn’t leave me with a whole lot of faith.”

“Look asshole, do you want my help or not?”

Eddie mulls it over for a long moment. Reluctantly, he says, “I suppose.”

Richie gets off the bar stool and walks into the kitchen to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder. “How may I be of assistance?”

Eddie puts some vegetables and a knife on the cutting board and slides it across the counter towards him. “Mince these carrots and the garlic and I’ll chop the onion.”

“Yes, chef,” he says, overly serious. Eddie snorts and gently knocks an elbow into his side. Warmth blooms up along his ribs. He swallows and picks up the knife.

They work together in pleasant silence for a long while, the repetitive sounds of their chopping and shuffling lulling Richie into a hazy calm. Eventually Eddie starts absentmindedly humming something and Richie finds that he likes the softness of his voice. It strikes him then that this is the most at ease he’s felt in months, maybe even years. Something whispers at the back of his mind that this is what happiness is rumored to feel like, but he’s too cowardly to look that thought in the eye.

Eddie sets some oil heating in a pan on the stove and starts sautéing their vegetables. The fragrance of garlic and onions fills the kitchen in a heady way that loosens the knot of Richie’s stomach. It stirs up a weird sort of nostalgia in him for childhood memories he doesn’t have: the silhouette of a loving mother at the stove; something baking in the dark, the soft golden light of the oven the only illumination in the shadows.

He doesn’t realize he’s frowning until Eddie asks, “Something wrong?”

“No, just… No.”

Eddie stares at him. “Alright. Well, if you’re momentarily done dissociating, could you dump that can of tomatoes in?”

Richie huffs out a laugh despite himself and reaches for the can. His fingers curl into the dent in the tin where it fell from the grocery bag, when… _whatever_ that was happened between them in the driveway, Eddie’s fingers on his shoulders, in his hair, along his brow, consuming him. He keeps thinking of it as a moment, but then his thoughts attack each other like dogs, tearing themselves apart — it wasn’t a moment; it wasn’t anything; this incessant, delusional hoping of his is becoming more pathetic by the hour. The phantom memory of Eddie’s fingers pushing through his hair sparks across his scalp and now his spine and he shivers involuntarily. Eddie, close enough that their arms brush when they move, notices.

“Cold?”

Shame floods through him once again. The increasing familiarity of it throws him back into adolescence with a violence. “Uh, yeah.”

Eddie walks away and Richie goes rigid with self-hatred behind his turned back. _Uh, yeah?_ God, he was an idiot.

He watches as Eddie moves towards the open window above the sink. He notices Eddie’s bare feet against the rug and wonders when he’d discarded his socks. The image strikes a chord within him, plunging him into images of an anonymous partner walking through a sunlit house, trailing their fingers along the wall. There’s a warmth to it, a quiet glow of love and ease. The anonymity of it fades without him realizing it’s happening, and suddenly it’s Eddie in jeans and an old t-shirt, his bare feet treading a path he’s walked a hundred times before, seeking out Richie in the home they’ve made together. That treacherous voice in the back of his mind whispers that it wasn’t a sudden change at all — that it was always Eddie. That even before it had a shape, it was always going to be Eddie.

The daydream slips away from him and scrapes him raw on the way out. He watches as Eddie stretches for the window crank, pushing up on his toes, his shoulder blades shifting beneath his polo, and winds it closed. When he turns around he gives Richie a small smile.

It’s nothing. They’ve saved each other’s lives more times than he can count — a gesture this small shouldn’t even register. And yet.

_For you, he did it for you. You didn’t ask. You didn’t say a word._

He nearly cracks right then and there, tomatoes in hand.

“Thanks,” he croaks.

Eddie’s eyes flutter. He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. He doesn’t cross the distance between them.

Richie takes in a shaky breath and represses as much of the trembling as he can. He peels back the pull tab on the can and dumps the tomatoes into the pan.

“I can take it from here,” Eddie says. He gives Richie a flat smile and Richie just nods, setting the empty can down on the counter.

“I’ll just—” He throws a thumb behind him at the couch. Eddie nods and Richie tries to make his escape look as far from fleeing as possible. He’s not sure he’s entirely successful.

He sinks into the de-sheeted couch and bullies himself into pulling it together. This is fucking ridiculous. Absolutely pathetic. He’s almost forty years old. He can’t be acting like this. It shouldn’t be biologically possible. His knees crack when he crouches down and he has permanent lines eroded into his fucking forehead — it shouldn’t be possible to feel this terribly, vulnerably young.

It’s another twenty minutes before he hears the click of the burner turning off and Eddie orders him to get the fucking table ready. He pulls out the plates and silverware while Eddie drains something in the sink. When he’s setting everything up on the table, Eddie comes to stand behind him, the warmth of his shoulder pressing into Richie’s back, and starts ladling whatever he’s made onto the plate Richie just put down. When Richie sees what it is, he groans.

“You got something to say, jackass?”

Richie presses his fingers against his eyes, his words muffled by his palms. “Eddie fucking Spaghetti.”

Eddie freezes behind him. He can feel the tension harden in him where the lines of their bodies meet. “Say one more word and these tongs are going between your ribs.”

He cracks up. “_Eddie_ _fucking Spaghetti_.”

He feels the press of the tongs against his back. “Sit down, you ungrateful bastard.” The tongs push him in the direction of a chair.

He does as he’s bid and sits down, snickering. Eddie taken the seat to his left, their bodies angled perpendicularly to each other. It’s better than Eddie sitting across from him in that they aren’t face to face, forced to meet each other’s eyes, but it’s also worse in that their bodies are inhabiting the same corner of space — their feet brush against each other under the table, knees knocking together occasionally, and the back of Eddie’s upper arm is resting against the front of his. It’s like the maddening proximity of their youth is creeping back into them, back when they used to fall asleep back to back and crush each other in the hammock, legs intertwining easily. Back when things didn’t have to have meaning, when they could give and take from one another without pause. Not that he didn’t replay those moments hours later when he was alone and try to see them in every light possible. He was just better at pretending back then.

The sound of Eddie opening a bottle of wine at the table breaks him away from his thoughts. He watches as Eddie pours his glass nearly to the brim. An awkward silence falls over them.

“So,” Ritchie says, picking up his fork and swirling it through the pasta, “is this your signature dish?”

“Fuck off,” Eddie says. He promptly gulps down a third of the wine. Richie raises his eyebrows. When Eddie sees his expression, he runs his tongue across his teeth and gestures to the bottle. “Want some?”

Richie thinks about it. The memory of waking up with the taste of bourbon in his mouth sours his mind. He imagines one glass of wine turning into two, turning into three, turning into three whole bottles between the two of them. Eddie seems a bit unhinged, like he won’t be pacing himself. The idea of the two of them relaxed to the point of stupidity in close quarters together strikes him between the rungs of his ribs like a dual-edged blade: he wants it like a fire wants oxygen, but the desire itself also terrifies him. The things he could say. The things he might do.

“No, he says. “I’m good.”

Eddie stares at his full glass for a moment. Then he picks up his fork and shoves a too-large bite into his mouth.

The awkward silence creeps back in on them. The sound of their forks against the ceramic plates grates on his nerves. He wants to bolt out of his skin.

It lasts about five minutes before Eddie sighs and rests his hands on either side of his plate, clutching his silverware tightly.

“You alright?” Richie asks slowly.

Eddie looks at him. He looks and he keeps looking. “Are we just not going to talk about it?” he says finally.

Fear strikes him like a bolt of lightning. His organs start unraveling, tumbling to the floor of his body in great matted tangles. He feels himself starting to peel apart at the edges, fraying at his fingertips. It’s like Eddie found the loose thread of him and yanked. The sickening penny taste of blood coats his tongue as he asks, “Talk about what?”

A twitch ripples across Eddie’s face. “About me. About what happened in the cave. About— afterwards.”

Ritchie blinks at him. “About you coming back?”

Eddie drops his eyes to his plate. He nods.

Ritchie shifts in his chair. They’d been doing such a good job of avoiding the topic — of pretending it never happened — that he hadn’t even really realized they’d been doing it. The little niggling fear buried deep in his stomach that he’d managed to suffocate all day blooms at the mention of Eddie’s return, though, and he feels the full force of it, like the lid’s been cracked open on Pandora’s box and reality’s come spilling out.

They’re not on a roadtrip to the mountains. They’re not two friends getting reacquainted after years apart. They’re an undead man resurrected by the deaths of a thousand children and the poor, pathetic bastard so sick with love that he’s willing to overlook it.

“What’s there to say?”

Eddie’s eyes flash to his, burning with disbelief. “_What’s there to say?_ I _died_, Richie. I died and came back to life and all our friends think I’m a fucking monster. And I don’t even know if they’re wrong.”

He grits his teeth. “They _are_.”

“How do you know?” Eddie demands, wild and unhinged. “How the fuck do you know that?”

“Do you feel like a monster?” he asks. The phantom weight of an arcade token burns like a brand against his palm. It cracks open the ugliness in him, the way fear always does. “Do you have any monstrous urges?”

Eddie’s lip trembles. “Like what?”

His mind trips onto a different track, tumbling down the other conversation they’re having in a different life, the one he’d initially thought he heard in Eddie’s voice. _Do you want me like I want you? Do you think about our bodies inside each other, what it would feel like? _He walks the liminal space between the two like a tightrope. “Do you want to eat me alive?”

Eddie leans back an inch, his face draining of color. “You’re my best friend,” he says, hollow. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Richie smiles at him and forces down the emotion crawling up his throat. “See. Can’t be a killer clown if you aren’t a killer.”

Eddie drops his head into his hands, his palms shaking violently. “Richie.”

Richie’s stomach drops. He reaches out a hand but hesitates, fingers twitching above Eddie’s bicep. “Whoa, hey. Eddie, dude—”

Eddie’s voice cracks and breaks. “I don’t know. Richie, I don’t know what I am. I don’t know if I’m fucking _me_ anymore.” He starts crying, his face hidden away behind his hands. “I don’t wanna hurt anybody.”

Richie shuts down. He doesn’t know what to say. The need to say something, to alleviate Eddie’s pain, wars with his complete cluelessness and tears him to pieces.

Eddie drops his hands to the table, his face wretched with misery. Richie’s never seen him like this. Not from broken bones or terror. Not even from death.

“If—” he starts, and then he hiccups into crying again before he can stave it off long enough to speak. “If it happens. If I do something, you can’t— you can’t let anything happen.”

Richie’s heart stops.

“You gotta end it, Richie. You can’t let me hurt anybody.”

He thinks he’s had a nightmare like this before. He thinks he knows how it ended.

“No,” he says. Eddie looks at him in agony. “No, Eddie, I’m not—”

“Richie, _please_—”

“_No_.” Eddie actually flinches. Richie feels like the room is crumbling around him. Shards of images keep piercing through his thoughts: Eddie’s face shifting into rows of teeth, Eddie with blood and gore stained down his throat, Eddie with Richie’s heart in his mouth. As horrible as it is, it’s less painful than the mere suggestion of Eddie’s blood on Richie’s hands, which makes his whole body start trembling. “You can’t ask me to do that,” he says quietly. It’s all he can manage.

Eddie stares at him for a moment, his face flushed and raw. “There’s nobody else to ask.”

He breathes hard through his nose. “It’s not going to happen. You’re fine.”

“I just need to know that you’ll do it.”

“And what am I supposed to do? Stab you with a kitchen knife? Bash your head in with the centerpiece?”

Eddie’s lip quivers. He’s struck then by what it must be like for Eddie to say all this, for someone so debilitatingly afraid of death. “Whatever you can.”

Richie looks away — he has to. Then he feels fingers curl around his wrist, pressing into his pulse. He stares at the point of contact, Eddie’s pale, spindly fingers wrapped around him.

“That thing ruined our lives,” Eddie says, and Richie drags his eyes back up to his. The pain in them nearly drowns him. “It murdered our classmates, our siblings. It terrorized us, consumed our childhoods just as good as killing us, and then it took away the one good thing we had left: our friendship. I won’t let that happen to anyone else. Not because of me.”

Richie can see the struggle in his face, how hard he’s working to be brave in the face of this. He’s fighting against every instinct he has to pretend nothing’s changed, to run away back to comfort and stability. It’s taking everything he has. The truth is that Richie always called Eddie out for being a coward when they were younger, for running away from the things that scared him, because it made him feel better about his own cowardice. He could gather up the courage to follow his friends to their deaths but not to tell anyone that he liked men, or to tell the one man that mattered that he was in love with him, always had been, always will be. Sitting here, watching Eddie revolt against every cowardly bone in his body— it breaks him.

“Alright,” he murmurs. He drops his eyes back down to Eddie’s hand on his. “I promise.”

There’s silence for a second, and then Eddie lets out a big, shuddering breath. He withdraws his hand. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

Richie doesn’t respond. He just sits there, staring at the table, trying not to think about what he’s just done. His thoughts keep swirling round and round, though, chasing each other like water down a drain. Derry taught him so many lessons as a kid, about who he was and what that meant, about how to survive. He thought if he hid himself and his affections that it would keep he and Eddie safe. He spent his whole childhood suffocating his feelings and making himself miserable so that they would come out of everything alive. And now it might all have been for nothing. All that pain and wasted youth just so Eddie could still die at the end.

“I need a fucking cigarette.” He pushes away from the table and walks out the front door.

The air has chilled significantly with the sunset. It’s a nice shock to the system. He feels some of the muddied edges of his emotions get swept away by the breeze and feels a bit more clear-headed. This has maybe been the shittiest week of his life, maybe of anyone’s life in the whole history of the world. He sits down in one of the rickety porch chairs and digs the emergency pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

He’s just lit one and taken a long pull when the screen door creaks open and falls shut again. He keeps his eyes trained on the twilit treeline as Eddie settles into the seat beside him. “I didn’t think you still smoked,” he says. “Not cigarettes at least.”

A week ago he would have told him to go fuck himself. After everything that’s happened, though, he can’t justify wasting any more time on posturing and pretend. “What else is there?”

“I thought vaping was all the rage in LA. I can see it now: Vape God, Richie Tozier.”

He laughs through a drag. “I’m an old man, Kaspbrak. Vaping’s for the youths.”

“Hmm. Maybe a big wizard pipe then.”

Richie looks over at him and raises his eyebrows suggestively. “Ceci n'est pas une pipe.”

Eddie laughs. “I really thought you’d outgrown the dick jokes.”

“I’m a professional comedian, Eds. Dick jokes makes up ninety percent of my act.”

Eddie gives him a small, wry smile. “And how is it that someone with the taste of a thirteen-year-old boy can also quote Magritte in decent French?”

Richie falters. He takes a deep pull off the cigarette. “I had a, uh… person who was an art history buff. Watched lots of documentaries and stuff.”

Eddie doesn’t question him further, just nods. The conversation falls away from them then and they sit in silence for a while. Richie is the one to break it this time. “Do you feel any different? Since, uh… since coming back, I mean.”

Eddie’s mouth turns down at the corners. He rubs his hands together, his leg bouncing anxiously. “A little,” he admits. He quickly backtracks: “Nothing, like, to worry about, just. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling, I guess.”

“What kind of a feeling?”

He thinks about it, his features pinching in concentration. “Like… like I’ve been cleaned out. Like I was a fish in a tank, and someone scooped me out for a little while to tidy things up, to get rid of the gunk. Then they dropped me back in.”

“In a good way?”

“I don’t know. Everything’s the same, just… off.”

“But you don’t feel like you’re going to…”

Eddie raises his brows. “Unhinge my jaw and swallow some kids? No.”

Richie pushes out a long stream of smoke and just nods.

“I’m sorry for ruining dinner,” Eddie says. There’s a tired, fragile note to his voice.

With faux thoughtfulness, Richie says, “It could have used more salt.”

Eddie laughs, a big guffaw of a thing, and punches him in the arm. “Fuck off, you dick. My spaghetti is great.”

“We should probably go back and finish it, then. Before a bear comes along and does it for us.”

Eddie gives him a soft smile. “Alright. I think it’s probably cold by now, though.”

“Maybe that’ll make it more edible.”

He gets another punch in the arm for that one, right in the same place. He’ll have a bruise there tomorrow. “Dick.”

They follow each other inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a weak ass spaghetti dinner is actually something that can be so personal
> 
> (director's cut: eddie's humming I'm Not in Love by 10cc)


	5. in the dream i don't tell anyone, you put your head in my lap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's pretty gay, fellas

They wash the dishes together, bickering pleasantly, and then suddenly it’s 10 pm and they’re looking at the bags under each other’s eyes. The bone-deep tiredness is so strong between them it’s palpable.

“Old fucking men,” he mutters, and Eddie nods beside him, his eyes half-lidded.

The problem from earlier reenters his brain. “I, uh, went looking for a second bed earlier and couldn’t find one.”

Eddie just nods again. “Only one bed,” he says.

“Where did you used to sleep as a kid, then?”

“Couch.” He points at one of the two loveseats in the living room. A four-foot-something eleven-year-old Eddie Kaspbrak could definitely fit. Six-foot-tall Richie Tozier is going to have to cut off some limbs.

“Huh.”

“You’re not sleeping on the couch, Richie.”

He peels his eyes away from the loveseat to look at Eddie, whose expression is veiled and hard to parse. Richie raises an eyebrow at him in question.

“We’ve both been through too fucking much in the past few days for one of us to break their back on the couch. There’s plenty of room in the bed for both of us.”

Something electric comes to life inside of him, like a fallen power line whipping itself about. “Right.”

Eddie, half asleep already, grabs him by the shirt and tugs him along towards the bedroom. Richie’s heart stumbles over itself. He’s had dreams like this before: a dark-headed lover dragging him to bed, his blood hot and wanting. Richie’s never teetering on the edge of all-consuming exhaustion in his dreams, though, and neither is the person with their fist in his shirt.

Eddie fumbles the door open and suddenly the bed is swimming up like a great threatening beast in his vision, the Raggedy Anne doll staring at him smugly. Eddie walks over to the side of the bed farthest from the window, predictable as always, and starts peeling his shirt off. Richie freezes in the doorway.

The shifting expanse of Eddie’s back is revealed first, the muscles in his arms working as he yanks the shirt off in that boyish way that always pulls something loose in Richie. The collar catches in his hair and ruffles it about, and as he pulls the fabric off down his arms, the planes of his stomach come into view. Moonlight pours in through the blinds and slats into the rungs of his ribs, dissecting him into pale glow and hazy blue shadows. Richie nearly swallows his own tongue.

Eddie smooths out the shirt and folds it, placing it on the nightstand. He grabs his belt buckle, about to start undoing his pants, when he looks up at Richie staring at him. “What?” he asks.

Richie panics. “Nothing,” he says, forcing himself to be casual. “Just didn’t think mousy Eddie Kaspbrak would ever have abs.”

Eddie glares at him. Richie sees a flush climb up his throat, spreading like ivy, and latches on, unable to look away.

“I grew up,” Eddie is saying, his vocal chords moving. “What about you? Looks like some of the frog melted out of your face. You must be overjoyed.”

It takes a second too long for Richie to snap back to reality. “Over the moon.”

Eddie narrows his eyes at him and then just shakes his head. His fingers start unweaving his belt and Richie has to look away or he might spontaneously combust. He walks over to the other side of the bed and starts undressing himself, yanking off his shirt as quickly as he can and shucking off his jeans. He’s rifling through his bag as a pretense to cover up his inner panic over whether or not to put on a pair of sweatpants when Eddie walks out of the room and across the hall to the bathroom wearing only his boxer briefs. He hears the water start to run and he sits down on the bed, leaving his bag on the floor.

“Fuck,” he breathes. He pinches the bridge of his nose.

He hears Eddie switch the bathroom light off and pad back into the room. The bed jostles underneath him as Eddie turns over the comforter and slips under the sheets. Richie takes in one last breath and then he twists around, maneuvering himself under the covers. He reaches out for the Raggedy Anne doll and chucks it across the room. Eddie laughs beside him, shaking the mattress.

When they’re both settled in, they’re on their sides and facing each other. Eddie’s eyes, black in the dark, drift to various points of his face. Richie can feel the weight of them everywhere they go: his hair, his cheekbones, his jaw, his eyes. “What?” he asks, quiet.

Eddie takes a moment to respond. “Nothing. Just… I’m happy we’re here.”

“In the mountains?”

He blinks sleepily at him. “Just… here. Alive. Together.”

It feels like a warm coal starts glowing inside of him. “Me too.”

A small line appears between Eddie’s eyebrows. “Can I tell you something?” he whispers.

_Of course. Anything. Always._ “Yeah.”

“I think… I think I remembered you. When we were apart. I have this reoccurring dream about this boy. I can never see his face, but I know that I know him, that I— trust him. Like he’s a friend, or something. I think it’s you, from before.”

A fizzling sensation crackles through him. He makes a herculean effort to keep the hope welling up in him from entering his voice. “Did you remember the others?”

Eddie shakes his head softly against the pillow. “Just you.”

“Does that—” He swallows against the dryness of his throat. “Does that mean something?”

Eddie goes silent, his dark eyes pouring into him. “Maybe,” he says.

When he was younger, he thought about this moment constantly, daydreaming the different ways Eddie might one day say, ‘I love you, too.’ Kissing underneath the bleachers, fingers slipping between his on the couch, a note pushed into his locker. Ever since he’s come back to Derry and his memory has returned, he’s been right back in it. He falls in and out of fantasies at the drop of a hat: Richie pressing their mouths together; Eddie’s fingers on his thigh; lying in bed together with Eddie’s head on his chest, his hand carding through his hair. He can hardly believe this moment is real, the two of them inches apart, hands nearly touching on the mattress, whispering things in the dark.

“Eddie—” he starts.

Eddie’s eyes slip closed. “Sorry, Rich,” he murmurs. “I can’t fucking keep my eyes open.”

Richie swallows the words back down. “It’s okay. Some other time.”

Eddie hums in response. The line of his brow smoothes out and his face gradually slackens. Richie watches him for a long moment, slowly willing his heartrate back to normal. Eventually Eddie’s breathing becomes heavy with sleep and Richie rolls onto his back, unable to keep looking at him. He digs his fingernails into his palms and stares at the ceiling. He never fucking learns, does he?

It’s another couple of hours before he can stop analyzing things long enough to fall sleep.

Eddie’s all over him. His hands are in his hair, his arms cage his head. He has one knee between his legs and the other on the outside of his thigh. His mouth is pressing wet against his throat, teeth scraping along his skin, and his fingers are tugging at his hair, sending electric pulses skittering down to his hips.

“Richie,” Eddie murmurs, pressing a kiss behind his ear. Richie takes in a sharp breath, his eyes slipping closed. He draws his hand up Eddie’s thigh to the small of his back, fingers slipping underneath his sweater. The skin there is soft with warmth, and he feels the shudder that wracks down Eddie’s spine at the touch. He flattens his palm against the dip in his lower back and presses. Eddie’s breath hitches.

“Say it again,” Richie asks, his words thin with want.

Eddie presses a maddening kiss underneath his jaw at the top of his throat. Then another. Then another.

“Please,” he begs.

Eddie pushes himself up so he can look down at him, his dark eyes searching his face. His mouth is wet. “I—”

He wakes up with a start, his skin damp and feverish. He blinks and reaches out with a shaky hand for his glasses, pawing blindly at the nightstand. He finds them and slips them on, looking around the room to ground himself. The walls are still dark with night, moonlight slipping in through the blinds. He hasn’t been asleep for long, then — maybe an hour or two.

He falls back against the pillows and lets out a long breath through his nose. He’s losing his goddamn mind. Details of the dream press in on him, unbidden: the feel of Eddie’s mouth against his skin, the tease of his tongue, the warmth of his body beneath his hands. He tries to will them away, to squash the desperation billowing up inside him, but it’s overwhelming.

Eddie moves beside him and terror hits him like a truck. He thinks for a moment that he made some horrifying sound in his sleep, maybe even some sort of unconscious gesture, and Eddie’s about to call him out on it. Eddie doesn’t sit up, though. He just twitches, and Richie realizes he’s still asleep. The relief that floods through him is heady.

Eddie starts making sounds, half-bitten words that don’t quite make it out of his mouth. Richie listens to them and tries to decipher what he’s dreaming about. Eddie’s twitching worsens, his legs kicking out, and Richie realizes he’s having a nightmare. “Eddie,” he calls softly. He doesn’t wake. A distorted whimper crawls up his throat.

He’s shifted in his sleep, rolled over so his back is to Richie. Richie gets out of bed and walks around to Eddie’s side, crouching down beside him to wake him up gently. He gets a good look at Eddie and falls backwards onto the floor.

Eddie’s chest is glowing, a dim orange light shining out of him like there’s a flashlight pressed up against his skin. His eyes are rolled back in his head and his teeth are chattering. Richie can see the edge of the glow at the back of his throat behind his teeth. The rest of his body is rigid with paralysis, his arm trembling at his side with the tension of it. Richie panics and stumbles backwards. He wasn’t expecting this moment to come so soon. He thought they’d have more time. Their conversation from earlier filters through his mind. The promise he made.

“Eddie,” he croaks. Eddie doesn’t answer. He steps forward and hovers a hand above his shoulder, hesitating. Eddie wheezes with a reedy panic Richie hasn’t heard since they were children. He cranes his neck back like he’s trying to get away from something, and tears slip out of the corners of his eyes to fall down his temples. A broken sound falls out of his mouth and Richie lays his hand on his shoulder and shakes him.

Eddie jolts upright, heaving in giant gulps of air. His eyes are his own again, blinking the tears away. He presses a hand to his chest like he’s making sure it’s there. The glow is gone.

“Eddie—”

Eddie jumps, whipping his head around in his direction and scurrying back on the bed.

“Hey, hey, it’s just me,” Richie says, soft and placating.

Eddie’s face crumples. “Rich,” he says, and then he breaks down crying.

Richie crawls across the bed to him, no hesitation. He lays a hand on his shoulder and Eddie ducks into his open arms to wrap him up in a harsh embrace, hands scrabbling at his back, face pressed into his neck. Richie’s surprise lasts for a split second and then he’s closing his arms around him and resting his head on Eddie’s.

“You’re alright,” he says, and tightens his arms.

Eddie doesn’t say anything, just falls apart against his chest, his tears smearing against Richie’s collarbone. Richie waits him out, smoothing a hand back and forth across his shoulders. Eventually Eddie’s tears subside and his breathing calms. Richie pulls away slowly, just far enough that he can look Eddie in the eye, their arms still wrapped around each other.

“What happened?” he asks.

Eddie’s jaw quivers. He doesn’t respond.

Richie lifts a hand to his face, brushing the backs of his knuckles across his temple. “Eddie, come on, you’re scaring me.”

Eddie’s eyes squeeze shut. Another tear slides down the side of his face. Richie brushes it away. “It was a dream,” Eddie says. He doesn’t sound certain about it.

“What kind of dream?”

Eddie’s eyes go distant, the light in them slipping away. It scares the shit out of him; he grabs him by the arms and shakes him. Eddie’s eyes refocus, slowly seeming to see him again. “Don’t do that,” Richie says, his heart shuddering in his chest.

“Rich,” he says again. Richie squeezes his arm. Eddie’s eyes flicker between his own. “It felt so real.”

The image of Eddie’s glowing chest burns inside of him. “It was just a dream,” he lies.

“I saw you,” Eddie says. “Different versions of you. Sitting underneath the bleachers watching me dance with Elizabeth Whitman at prom. Doing cocaine in a dressing room somewhere. Kissing some… some guy on a lavender couch in a nice condo somewhere.”

Richie’s stomach drops out from under him. He got drunk and fought with his date at prom. He sat under the bleachers in the gym and took pulls from the flask he snuck in while he watched Eddie dance with his date through the slats in the steps. Stan found him crying into the sleeve of his suit jacket and drove him home. They never talked about it. Richie always wondered if he knew.

The other things happened too. He got into coke during the middle of his career, when the highs were high and the lows were low. He hasn’t done a line in years. Only his suppliers ever knew — he never told anybody. He also knows exactly which couch Eddie is talking about. David apartment sat for a successful screenwriter friend of his one weekend early on in their relationship. He invited Richie to stay with him, called it a lover’s retreat. They made out on that couch for hours while a pay-per-view movie played out on the television. They slept together for the first time that night.

Richie shuts down. He doesn’t know what to think, what to do. There’s no way that was a dream — coincidences don’t work like that. He thinks about the orange glow emanating out of Eddie’s chest, the terrible whites of his eyes. He thinks about It and the deadlights, how Beverly saw all their futures. He doesn’t know what any of it adds up to. They’re just floating variables briefly aligning in the shape of something. Something benign or malicious, he can't tell.

“It was just a dream,” Eddie says. Richie looks down at him and finds him looking back, searching his face. “Right, Richie?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah, Eds. It was just a dream.”

Eddie rolls the inside of his cheek back and forth between his teeth. He keeps staring at Richie, his eyebrows creasing.

“It wasn’t real,” Richie says, and Eddie finally nods. “Come on. Try and get some more sleep.”

He shuffles over and Eddie follows, lying down in the same way they had earlier. Richie raises his arm up this time, though, and Eddie shuffles in close, his hands resting against Richie’s chest. Richie lets his arm fall, his hand settling around his lower back.

“Thanks,” Eddie murmurs. His words are warm against the bare skin of Richie’s sternum.

“Go to sleep,” he says.

For a while they just breathe together, neither able to drift off again. Eventually he feels the tension ebb out of Eddie’s muscles and the puffs of air against his chest even out. He keeps himself awake another hour to make sure Eddie doesn’t go into that state again. By the time he’s tired enough to fall asleep on his own again, he finds that he can’t. He just holds Eddie in his arms until the sun comes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after staring at photos of james ransone i was so fucking tempted to give eddie tattoos. it felt a little too ooc tho. alas. perhaps in another fic.
> 
> also, thank you for your lovely comments you're all wonderful


	6. in these dreams it's always you

By the time sunlight starts filtering steadily through the window and Eddie stirs against his chest, Eddie’s slept seven hours without incident. Richie feels a knot of fear unwind behind his ribs.

Eddie lifts his head and looks down at Richie with bleary eyes, his hair sticking up in one direction. The cheek that had been resting on Richie’s chest is red. Despite the hours he’s spent suspended in gnawing terror, Richie can’t help but smile.

“Did last night really happen?” Eddie asks, squinting down at him. “Or did I just have the craziest inception dream ever?”

“You had some sort of nightmare last night that really shook you up,” Richie tell him. The ease with which he touched Eddie last night bites at him; his fingers twitch with the desire to smooth through Eddie’s hair. Everything’s different in the daylight. “You said it was about me.”

Eddie frowns. “It was, yeah,” he nods. He gets a far-off look on his face, like he’s remembering things. “God, it was so weird. I’ve never had a dream like that before. It was like I was really there — like I could smell and taste and touch things. You hear stuff about how your mind recycles things in your dreams — how the people in them are just strangers you passed on the street, the buildings are all places you’ve been before — but I swear I don’t know how I came up with half of that shit.” He hangs his head and sighs, exhausted. “Must’ve been the wine.”

Richie’s been turning it over in his head all night, trying to figure out what exactly happened to Eddie. The obvious answer — the one he would rather jump in front of a train than look in the eye — is that the others were right: Eddie’s got a piece of that monster living inside of him, moving him about like a puppet. Richie’s biggest fear is that after everything they’ve been through — facing It as children, forgetting each other, Eddie dying, Richie’s grief, Eddie coming back — he might have to put down the love of his life like a rabid dog. It’s unimaginable.

He won’t consider it. He can’t. Instead he comes up with a hundred other maybes: maybe Richie had a mental break and just hallucinated it, maybe the forces that brought Eddie back to life left some sort of mark on him, maybe this is just what happens to people who defy the basic laws of life and death.

He knows that he’s being selfish, that it’s reckless to ignore this instead of preparing for the worst, but he just doesn’t have it in him. He knows he made a promise. He knows. He also knows that if he tells Eddie what he saw that Eddie will walk out into the woods and start building his own funeral pyre.

He’s so tired of grieving.

“Come on,” he says, brazenly resting a hand on Eddie’s waist. “I’ll make breakfast.”

They go into the kitchen and Richie makes them omelets. He sees Eddie rubbing his temples at the dining table and brings him a cup of coffee. Their fingers brush as Eddie accepts it, smiling softly. “Thanks.”

Richie brings their omelets over and they eat in silence for a while. The softness of the sunlight filtering in through the window is jarring against the miserable thoughts weighing down on him. Finally he sets his fork down. The clang of it against his plate makes Eddie pause with his fork halfway to his mouth. He takes one look at Richie and sets the food back down.

“Something happened last night,” Richie admits. He sees Eddie’s hand begin to shake before he pulls it under the table out of sight.

“Something like what?” Eddie asks, avoiding his eyes. His voice is quiet and heavy, like he’s been expecting this. Richie hates it.

“When I woke you up from that dream last night, you weren’t… yourself. Your eyes were rolled back in your head and there was this…” He can’t say it. He thought he could, but he can’t.

A hand settles on top of his on the table. Eddie gives him a weak smile. “It’s okay, Rich. Just tell me.”

He takes in a sharp, painful breath. “There was a light glowing in your chest.”

Eddie’s hand spasms around his, clutching him tightly.

“You didn’t do anything,” he says quickly, emphatically. “You didn’t try to hurt me or do anything malicious. It was just like… like you were in some sort of trance.”

Eddie swallows. “Was it the deadlights?”

_No_, he wants to say. _Never_. “I don’t know.”

Eddie meets his eyes. “And the dream?”

He feels his muscles go tense with the instinct to bolt. What Eddie told him he’d seen last night was damning enough. If he’d seen anything else… His stomach twists at the thought of it. It takes him a long moment to overcome the powerful reflex curling his tongue in a lie. “It was real. Those were memories of mine. Or— or experiences, I guess. The parts of my life you weren’t around for.”

Eddie looks wretched. “How?” he croaks.

Richie shakes his head. “I don’t know. Best I can come up with is it’s like Bev seeing our futures in the deadlights. Like whatever happened to you when you—” His throat closes up around the words. “—when you died, it opened you up in the same way. Except instead of seeing the future, you’re seeing the past.”

“What the fuck,” Eddie breathes.

“Yeah.”

They sit in silence for moment, horror sinking over Eddie’s face while Richie desperately tries to talk himself down from bolting to the car. _He knows. The looks, the fantasies, the pathetic yearning. He knows he knows he kno_—

“What do I do, Rich?” Richie raises his eyes. Eddie’s got conflict twisted all over his face. “If it’s— _in_ me—”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Richie says, firm and resolute.

Eddie looks at him like he’s crazy. “What other fucking answer is there, Rich? It’s not like I could do this Exorcist shit before.”

“It could have something to do with the kids bringing you back, or the way you died, or—”

Eddie laughs at him. “Jesus, Rich, the answer’s staring us right in the fucking face—”

Richie snaps. “Why are you so fucking eager to die again?”

Eddie goes silent, surprise falling over his features like a bucket of cold water. Richie watches the thought unfurl behind his eyes as he actually thinks it over. “We thought we killed it once and we were wrong. It’s fucked with us our whole lives, tormenting us, stealing our memories. It’s easier for me to think it’s unkillable than to believe it’s actually gone — that it’s all over.”

Richie turns his hand under Eddie’s on the table and links their fingers together. “I know,” he says, and squeezes. “I keep jumping when I turn corners because I expect it to be there. But it’s not, Eds. I can feel it in my bones. I watched it rot in front of my eyes. Whatever’s happening to you, it’s different, so stop being chicken-shit and looking for a way out. I’m not losing you again.”

Eddie’s eyes go wet. He squeezes Richie’s hand back, and they hold onto each other tightly. “Okay,” he says.

Richie searches his eyes, trying to tell if he really means it. “Okay,” he echoes.

Eddie drops his eyes and Richie knows what he’s going to say, his stomach balling up in a painful knot. “About… about what I saw…” He braces himself for the end of the fucking world. Eddie’s hand goes gentle in his own, his thumb brushing back and forth across his skin. “It’s really fucked up it happened that way. I’m sorry. You didn’t choose to confide that shit in me. I can’t imagine how violated you probably feel right now. If you want to talk about it, we can, but if you want to forget about it—”

Richie laughs weakly at the idea of it. “I’ve been trying to forget about it my whole life, Eds. Even when I succeeded, it never went away. It just got quiet.”

Eddie’s silent for a moment. His hand grips Richie’s tighter. “Does anybody know?”

He can’t tell if he means the gay thing or the hopelessly-in-love-with-his-best-friend thing. He chooses to address the former. “No, nobody knows. Except the people I’ve— been with.”

Eddie gives him a sad little half-smile. “I’m sorry I took that away from you.”

“Don’t be,” he says, and he finds that he means it. “I thought about telling you guys a hundred different times, I was just too cowardly to do it.”

Eddie yanks gently on his hand. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

He laughs self-deprecatingly. “As of last night, you have plenty of evidence to the contrary.”

“What, you’re a coward because you didn’t tell us something we had no right to know? Because you struggled in silence, alone, for years? Because you kept yourself safe in a town that would have killed you?” The anger in Eddie’s voice catches him off guard. “Fuck that.”

He feels his throat start to waver, cloying sentimentality rising up like bile, threatening to come vomiting out of him. Embarrassed, he tries to fight it down, heat flushing his cheeks and worsening his shame in a feedback loop. Eddie grips his hand tighter, offering himself up as an anchor, and Richie feels like fissures are cracking all over his chest.

“We love you the way you are, Rich. We always have.”

He puts everything he has into holding the tears back but they still slip free. He laughs the way he always does in the face of real emotion, the sound thick and wet in his throat. “Last time I got this emotional was when your mom pegged me.”

Eddie thunks his head against the table. He laughs, light and breathy. “You’re such a dick.”

Richie smears the tears away with the back of his hand. “That’s what they call me.”

Eddie just groans. “I can’t believe you make money off the shit you say,” he says, sitting up. Their hands are still tangled together on the table.

He shrugs. “The American people are a notoriously stupid breed.”

“They have to be. Most of the time when you open your mouth I feel like _you_ should be paying _me_.”

Richie laughs.

They fall into comfortable silence for a moment, Eddie’s thumb resuming its motions across his skin, when he suddenly says, “Do you think we should tell the others? About me, I mean.”

Richie thinks about it. “We don’t even really know what to tell them, yet. I think we should monitor it, see what we can figure out first.”

Eddie raises his eyebrows. “Are you really okay with that? I mean, what if I accidentally go sleepwalking through your life again?”

Richie drops his eyes and shrugs. His panic from before has subsided into carelessness. It hasn't escaped his notice that Eddie's said nothing about Richie's feelings for him. He supposes that's answer enough. “I don’t imagine there’s a whole lot left to hide.”

“You’re being pretty cavalier about this. I think if the positions were reversed I would be halfway to Canada by now.”

He smiles wryly to himself at that, the phantom urge to bolt still moving restlessly in his fingers and toes. “Got a lot of secrets, do you, Kaspbrak?”

Eddie gives him a funny look, his eyes going soft and removed all at once. “I’ve got enough.”

“I show you mine, you show me yours?” he jokes.

“When the timing's right,” Eddie says, oddly serious.

Richie has no idea what the fuck that means.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> richie has a phd in emotional whiplash 👌


	7. with my tongue full of love and agony

“We should do something today,” Eddie tells him.

Richie dumps their plates in the sink. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. We’re out here in the mountains shrugging off reality for a few days. Might as well make the most of it.”

Richie looks at him softly. “Alright. What do have in mind?”

Which is how they wind up hiking the trail behind the cabin, holding back branches for each other and backtracking up wrong turns. Eddie seems to have a destination in mind, but he won’t tell him what it is.

“I’m out here in joggers and Converse, Kaspbrak.” It was the only clothing approaching workout gear that he’d packed. “You better not be leading me to the top of the goddamn mountain .”

Eddie lets go of a branch so it snaps into his stomach. While he’s recovering his breath, Eddie, smile in his voice, says, “A little mystery won’t kill you, Rich.”

“Oh, how the tables have turned,” he wheezes. There was a time when a lack of control over any given situation would have driven Eddie’s voice up three octaves. It’s nice to see him like this, even if the sudden change in his neuroses is a bit unsettling. He supposes if anything’s going to change someone, though, it’s death.

Eddie just laughs and keeps walking.

Richie takes a moment to appreciate the view in front of him: the green pine trees looming over either side of the trail; the last remaining wildflowers of the season growing at their bases; Eddie in his thigh-baring hiking shorts (“They were for an HR retreat, okay? Fuck off.”) and a gray athletic shirt, sweat slipping down the back of his neck. He’s grateful the exercise is keeping his blood localized to his heart.

About two miles in, he thinks he smells the thick freshness of water, and then Eddie steps out into a hole in the trees and there it is: a small lake. He follows after him and feels that familiar childhood giddiness stir inside of him at the sight of the water. God, he used to love swimming. He can’t remember the last time he did it — maybe years ago, maybe decades.

“My mom never used to let me come out here,” Eddie says. Richie turns to look at him, taking in the thoughtful expression on his face as he stares out at the water. “My grandpa would sneak me out in the mornings sometimes, though. Let me splash around for an hour or so while the sun came up. I thought I was going to die the water was so cold.”

And then he grabs the back of his shirt and starts pulling it over his head and Richie nearly swallows his tongue. He watches out of the corner of his eye as he pulls it off over his arms, revealing skin dewed with a light sheen of sweat. Muscle shifting sinewy in his arms and chest. An endless expanse of skin. Freckles, moles, bruises, scars. Richie’s fingernails dig into his palm.

“What, you forget what water is out there in California?” It takes Richie a second to realize Eddie’s talking to him.

“I forgot liquids could exist that weren’t diet teas or kombucha.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. He folds his shirt and sets it down on a rock before toeing off his shoes. Then he gives Richie a look that goes straight to his stomach. “Guess I gotta get you reacquainted then.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. Something fizzles low in his gut. “Guess you do.” He steps out of his Converse and strips off his worn cotton t-shirt before peeling off his joggers, leaving him in just his boxer briefs. Eddie’s eyes dip down before meeting his gaze again and Richie feels like he’s been engulfed in fire, his insides crackling.

“It’s not quite the same as going to the quarry when we were kids, is it?” Eddie asks. The sunlight’s hitting his eyes, stirring up a warm honey color out of the black. Richie wants to devour him.

“No,” he says. “No, it’s not.” And then he runs into the water.

Despite it being the throws of summer, the water’s somehow still colder than the ninth circle of hell. He relishes in the feeling of it, though, the shock it provides to his system, momentarily disrupting the muggy heat curling around inside of him and driving him crazy. He sinks his head under the water and swims out deeper until his feet can’t touch the floor. Eventually he feels a tug on his ankle and turns himself around to find Eddie behind him, his hair drifting about in the water, skin turned pale and waxy. A bubble of air escapes his mouth and Richie’s brain is sliced apart by an image of covering Eddie’s mouth with his own and sharing their air, his fingers dug through Eddie’s hair, their eyes squeezed shut.

Eddie pops up to the surface and Richie follows. A sun-bright grin unfurls across Eddie’s mouth and Richie feels himself splinter. “God, this feels fucking incredible.”

_Eddie’s weight on top of him, nails scratching through his hair, Richie buried in him to the hilt. Eddie’s mouth at his ear, breath washing hot and fast against his jaw, fingers squeezing Richie’s shoulders: “God, this feels fucking incredible.”_

Richie blinks. He splashes water in Eddie’s face. Eddie splutters comically and Richie grins, pushing the rabid desire down as deep as he can.

“We’re almost forty, you piece of shit,” Eddie says, swiping a wet hand down his face like it’ll remove any of the water. Richie’s mouth twitches. “We’re too old for that shit.”

Richie raises as eyebrow. “Really?” he asks. He splashes him again. “Seems fine to me.”

Outrage dawns slowly across Eddie’s face. Richie turns almost giddy with it, like he did when they were kids. There were few things more satisfying than getting a rise out of Eddie — the way he would turn his eyes on him, focus heavy and total. It’s a little terrifying that thirty years have passed and Richie still feels it the exact same way, like this is the truest part of him, the foundation that’s fixed and permanent. Put time and stance between them, strip him of his memories, and his body will still respond like this.

Absolutely blood-curlingly terrifying.

Eddie tackles him, sending them both sinking into the water. His hands dig into Richie’s skin, fingers gripping his chest and his bicep, legs knocking into his. Richie writhes under him and turns them over, hands curled around Eddie’s ribcage, his bones solid under his touch, skin cool. Eddie’s hand slides up to his throat, fingers at the nape of his neck. His other hand presses into the middle of his chest. For a brief moment they stay like that, legs kicking between each other, thighs brushing, pulses beating hard under each other’s palms. And then Eddie gives him a hard push to the sternum and breaks free, kicking up to the surface.

Richie stays under the surface for a minute, staring at Eddie’s legs. He feels like the push dislodged something in him, some keystone or linchpin that was keeping him together. The various pieces of him jostle threateningly as he kicks up to the surface.

He takes in a big gulp of breath and cards his fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his face. When he finally gets all the water blinked out of his eyes, Eddie’s staring at him, expression hard to parse.

He swallows. “What?”

Eddie keeps looking at him, saying nothing. The sheen of water across his face is conspiring with the sun to bring out his freckles: Richie can see every single one dappled across his nose and the fine bones under his eyes as clear as day. “Can I ask you something?” he says eventually.

“Yeah. Of course.”

Eddie drifts closer to him. His eyes, warm like coffee, flicker across his face. “Are you still a sore loser?”

Richie’s eyebrows draw together, confused. Eddie flicks his wrist and send a huge wave of water splashing into his face, nearly dislodging his glasses. Water-blind, Richie hears Eddie take off swimming before he sees it — after he blinks his eyes clear, he catches sight of Eddie swimming off towards the big rock about 100 meters away. He shakes his head to try and get his thinking straightened out and takes off after him.

He is absolutely still a sore loser.

By the time they’ve half-drowned each other and pulled their bodies back onto land, Richie feels like he’s burned away every last bit of energy he has. It leaves him with an oddly clean feeling inside. It also leaves him nearly dead on his feet.

Without towels, they’re too wet to put their clothes back on, so they make the trek back to their cabin in just their shoes. Richie lets Eddie lead the way, ostensibly because he knows the way better, but in reality it’s because he’s pathetic and the pleasure of watching the muscles move in Eddie’s back, ass, thighs, and calves is too heady to deny.

By the time they’ve dragged themselves back to the cabin, they’re deep into the afternoon and the sun is blazing above them. Walking into the crisp air conditioning of the cabin feels like a holy blessing falling over Richie’s body. He groans at the sensation of it, his eyes slipping closed. He drowses for a moment, the lack of sleep the night before catching up to him with brutal force. He feels a hand drift through his hair, fingers drifting across his scalp pleasantly, and labors to open his heavy eyelids.

Eddie’s standing in front of him, a fond look on his face. “Go take a shower, you cretin. You have no idea what was in that lake water.”

“Too tired,” he mumbles, his eyes starting to fall closed again. “Gonna have to give me a sponge bath.”

Eddie’s fingers rub through his hair once more before pulling away. Richie barely stops himself from protesting. Eddie gives him a light push on the back in the direction of the bathroom. “Go on,” he says. “You can sleep afterwards.”

Richie mumbles something insensible in response and trudges off towards the bathroom. Once he gets the door closed behind him, he peels off his wet underwear and steps into the shower. The shock of cold water coming out of the showerhead is enough to briefly jolt him into a slightly more awake state, which lasts just long enough for him to decipher the shampoo from the body wash. He squeezes some into his palms and starts massaging it into his hair just as the water warms up. His eyes close on their own accord and then his mind is drifting, the fingers in his hair becoming Eddie’s, pressing loving and insistent into his scalp. He dips his head under the water and lets the showerhead do most of the work, suds cascading down his chest, his back, his legs. He starts in with the body wash, rubbing cursory circles into his skin before he feels like he’s about to brain himself on the shower tile and quickly washes it off.

As soon as he steps out of the bathroom, an old, discolored towel wrapped around his waist, Eddie slips in to take his place, his shoulder brushing across Richie’s damp chest. Richie ambles the few short feet into the bedroom and pulls on the first things he manages to grab out of his bag: sweatpants and a worn-in long-sleeve from his college improv troupe. While the bed looks like a fucking mirage to him right now, he feels weird falling asleep there without Eddie, like he’s squatting in someone else’s house, so he forces himself to stumble back into the living room and collapses on the couch.

He tries to keep himself awake until Eddie’s out of the shower, but he keeps drifting off and jolting awake when his head bends forward towards his chest. He blinks his eyes closed and next thing he knows Eddie is in front of him, a hand passing over Richie’s newly clean hair.

“I knew you were putting product in it,” he says, and Richie stares at him in hazy confusion. “The curls,” Eddie says by way of explanation, tugging on a strand of his hair. “You washed your hair and now it’s curly again, like how it used to be.”

“M’publicist says I look too innocent when it’s curly. Have to put this shit in it before my acts. Don’t wear it curly much anymore.”

“You should,” Eddie says. He’s got that fond look softening across his features again. He ruffles his hand through Richie’s hair. Richie’s eyes flutter closed. “It looks nice. It looks like you.”

Richie just hums in response. He feels the couch dip beside him, Eddie’s fingers never leaving his hair. He slips into sleep between one breath and the next.

He’s in his high school gymnasium, a bunch of pastel balloons and Christmas lights strung up all around him. It’s full of adults in nice clothes, grouped off together and mingling with drinks in their hands. A song is playing over the speakers but he can’t focus on it enough to tell what it is, only that it makes him feel melancholic and desperate.

He turns around, looking for an exit, and bumps into someone.

“Sorry,” he says, and then he looks up and realizes it’s Eddie.

“Don’t be,” Eddie says, and he slips his hand into Richie’s. “Don’t ever be sorry, Rich.”

Richie blinks at him, his palms starting to sweat. “What—” he starts, his brows drawing together. The desperation is getting worse, itching insistently beneath his skin.

“Is this your friend, Eddie?”

Richie hears the voice but he can’t see who it belongs to. His spine feels all wrong in his body.

A woman appears in front of him, blond-haired, blue-eyed, tan. Different from Richie in every conceivable way. She smiles at him. “Eddie, is this your little friend?”

Eddie pulls his hand away, and Richie’s palm freezes instantly, so cold it burns, like he’s dipped it in nitrogen. He holds it to his chest and tries to warm it, but it just goes numb and then disappears.

“Sorry,” Eddie apologizes, ducking his eyes, and Richie stares at him, anger joining the fray of emotions roiling about inside of him. “This is Richard Tozier. Rich, this is my wife.”

Richie flinches at the use of his given name. Eddie’s wife steps in close and pushes him. “I know what you are, Richard,” she says, the kindness melted out of her face. Hatred and disgust burn in her eyes. “He’s not like you. Don’t try to change him.”

“Eddie—” Richie chokes, looking around her at Eddie. Eddie looks away.

Everything changes: he’s in Pennywise’s cave with Eddie leaning over him, the others nowhere in sight. Pennywise feels wholly absent, like he and this cave have never existed in the same place.

Eddie’s palm presses into his cheek. “I saved you,” he says, smiling intimately, like it’s just for him. He leans closer, his knees settling o either side of Richie’s hips, his other hand pressing into the ground just beside Richie’s face.

“You did,” Richie nods. He reaches out to touch the dip in Eddie’s waist and skims his hand up to his ribcage. “You saved me.”

Eddie’s eyes flicker across his face, black like a shark’s in the dark of the cave. It makes him look hungry. “You were nearly a goner,” he murmurs. His gaze settles on Richie’s lips. “Thought I was going to have to kiss you awake like in a fairy tale.”

“Maybe you should do it,” Richie breathes. He drags his thumb along the line of one of Eddie’s ribs. “To make sure.”

Eddie smiles, slow and beautiful. He leans in and drags his lip along the curve of Richie’s jaw. “Like that?” he murmurs, the words spoken into his skin. Richie’s breath hitches. He shakes his head.

Eddie shifts upwards, nosing into the hair on the side of his head. He laves a wet, open-mouthed kiss against Richie’s ear, his tongue tracing inside the shell of it. Richie’s mouth falls open as his breathing turns heavy. “Like that?” Eddie whispers, right into his ear. Richie shivers. He shakes his head no.

Eddie moves again, settling right above Richie, their noses nearly touching. “Like this?” he says, and then he presses his lips to Richie’s and devours him.

Richie’s hand delves into his hair, gripping him tight. Eddie groans into his mouth and changes the angle, lowering his body so they’re pressed together line for line. Richie’s breath stutters out of him and Eddie breathes him in, tongue tracing his lower lip. “I’ve wanted you like this for so long,” Eddie says quietly, their lips touching with every word. He pushes Richie’s hair off his face and cards his fingers through it. It’s curly, Richie thinks, and then he can’t remember why that matters, especially not with Eddie licking into his mouth and shaking under his hands. “Ever since we were young.”

“Me too,” Richie says. “Always. Before I even knew what it meant.”

Eddie leans back, settling on Richie’s thighs. The closeness to where Richie wants him is maddening. Eddie gives him a coy smile and reaches for Richie’s belt, his eyes ravenous. He undoes it slowly, pulling the tail out of the buckle. “You should’ve told me,” he says, chastising him flirtatiously. Something dark appears at the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah?” He sits up on his elbows, leaning towards him. It drags their hips together and they both let out shaky breaths. “Would we have done this back then?”

Eddie’s fingers undo his belt and move it aside. Then they drift down the fly of his jeans, scratching lightly down the fabric across his dick before trailing lower along the seam. He moans, the sound punched out of him in pieces. His eyes squeeze shut.

Something wet lands on his shirt. He opens his eyes. Eddie’s looking at him heatedly. There’s something streaming steadily out of his mouth, covering his chin and neck. More of it is leaking out of his chest and staining his shirt.

“Eddie, what—”

Eddie leans in and presses a long, filthy kiss into his mouth. It tastes like iron and rot.

When he pulls back his skin is white and gaunt. He frowns and presses a hand to the growing stain on his chest. He looks at Richie with sad eyes and says, “You should have told me.”

He jolts awake. He frantically takes in his surroundings: the cabin living room, a dusky sunset filtering in through the blinds, one of the tiny loveseats beneath him. There’s also a warm body beneath his head. He pulls back to find Eddie looking at him, hair sleep-mussed, cheeks red, breath coming to him fast. Richie freezes. There’s a wild look in his eyes and the stare he gives Richie is molten.

They stare at each other for a moment, both breathing hard. Scraped raw by the dream, Richie leans into Eddie’s space, Eddie’s eyes swallowing him up. Richie grabs the hem of Eddie’s t-shirt and pushes it up to his collar bones. There’s a faint orange ring dimming deep in his chest.

“Fuck,” Richie chokes. He scrambles back, his spine banging into the arm of the couch.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie rushes to say. He yanks his shirt back down and wavers between leaning forward and backward out of Richie’s space. “I didn’t mean to, I—”

Richie stands up on weak legs, his knees nearly buckling out from under him. He presses his hands into his face. “Fuck,” he breathes again.

“Richie, I’m sorry.” Eddie sounds miserable. “I wasn’t trying to see, it just happened.”

Richie just stands there breathing into his hands. He feels like he’s going to hyperventilate.

“I didn’t even know that was possible,” Eddie babbles. He sounds just like he did when they were kids. “I thought it was just supposed to be seeing the past, which was bad enough, I didn’t think I could see your dreams, I promise I wouldn’t have looked on purpose, you gotta believe me, Rich.”

Richie drops his hands and walks to the kitchen, his thoughts crowding in his head like static. He feels Eddie’s eyes follow him like a physical touch. He yanks open the cabinets, on after another, until he finds what he’s looking for: the wine. He pulls out the stopper Eddie put in it last night and drinks straight from the bottle, gulping it down desperately. He wants to set himself on fire. He wants to burn himself into the ground.

He hears Eddie get up and then there’s a hand on his back, burning him like a crucifix. The other reaches up to cover his own around the bottle and gently pulls it away. There’s barely any left. “Rich, please don’t,” Eddie begs quietly beside him. Richie avoids his eyes, staring at a whorl in one of the wood planks in the floor. “It’s okay,” Eddie says softly.

Richie nearly shakes out of his skin. “Please don’t touch me right now,” he says, voice quiet. He feels Eddie’s hesitation, but he relents and lets go. Richie feels like he can breathe again.

Silence falls between them like an axe. He can’t see a way out of it. Eddie might’ve known before, but he didn’t _know_. Not like that. Not in such disgusting, violating detail. Richie might as well have cut his heart open and laid it out on the dining table for dissection. He’s trembling. He can’t stop trembling.

“Richie, it’s okay, I promise. Please, let’s just… sit down and— do something to get our minds off of it.”

_Scrub your mind with bleach. Burn the memory out. Carve the tumor of it from your brain._

“Richie, please,” Eddie begs, his voice strained. Richie walks numbly over to the couches, consciously choosing to sit on the one they hadn’t fallen asleep on. Eddie sits next to him, leaving as much space between them on the loveseat as possible. “Do you want to play a game or something?” he asks, voice small.

You did that, he thinks. You made him feel that way.

He nods. Eddie gets back up and walks over to the tv stand, opening a cabinet and rifling through it. He comes back with a busted Cranium box. Richie eyes it and a laugh bubbles out him. Eddie gives him a small, anxious smile. He starts getting everything set up and Richie goes back to the kitchen, grabbing both the remaining unopened bottles of wine. Eddie gives him a look when he sits back down and twists off the cap of one. Richie sets it down in front of him. Eddie stares at it for a moment before he grabs it and takes a long pull, the line of his throat moving with action of it. He pulls off with a breathless sound and hands the bottle back to Richie.

They take turns drinking until they’ve finished it. Then, with nearly a liter of alcohol drifting out into his blood like a balm, they start to play.

Richie starts to feel the alcohol ten minutes in. He’s not belligerent — he’s not even really drunk — but it helps feel like there’s a distance between things, instead of there being a hundred terrible images cluttering up his mind like a 10-car pileup. He even finds himself laughing at Eddie’s shitty attempt at sculpting a barrel of monkeys and his off-key humming of Sweet Home Alabama. Eddie nearly loses it at his impression of a misremembered Gettysburg Address, and then the world seems to fit itself back together.

After about an hour they tire of the game and Eddie grabs the last bottle of wine from the floor and says they should play something else.

“Like what?” Richie asks, boneless and numb. The avalanche of his anxiety has melted away, leaving him hollow. It’s pleasant and terrible all at once.

“Something simple. Twenty questions?”

Richie’s brows furrow skeptically. “Is that even a game, really?”

Eddie shrugs and starts opening the bottle. “Does it matter? Something to do.”

Richie stares at him for a moment, but Eddie’s busy with the wine. “Alright,” he relents.

Eddie flashes him a smile. Not a real one, though. Something brittle and sharp. Fake. “Great. Me first: have you slept with anyone famous?”

Richie snorts. “Define famous.”

Eddie’s eyes take on a gleeful shine. “Anybody I might’ve seen on tv. Who wasn’t, like, an extra or something.”

“Then yeah.”

“Who?”

“I think that’s more than one question.” Eddie gives him a dull look. He sighs. “I had a one-night-stand with the guy from the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter commercials.”

Eddie bites his lip. Richie can see the laughter bubbling up in his throat, watches it twitch across his face. He rolls his eyes. “You can laugh.”

“Oh, thank God,” he says, breathless, and promptly dissolves into a fit of laughter. “Please—” he says, still laughing, “please tell me that’s not the most famous person you’ve ever had sex with.”

“Of course not. I just feel weird about the other ones.” He lowers his voice to something conspiratory. “Most of them weren’t great in bed.”

Eddie snickers, his fit coming to an end. He takes a pull from the bottle of wine, his lips curved in a smile around the mouth.

Richie swallows. “My turn,” he says with too much enthusiasm. “How many people have you had sex with?”

Eddie thinks about it, counting off on his fingers and mouthing names to himself. “Five,” he says, wiggling his fingers at him.

“I was really worried you were going to say one,” Richie says.

Eddie yanks the throw pillow from behind his back and chucks it at him. He blocks it from hitting his face with his arms. “Fuck off.”

The questions get surprisingly tamer as they go on, the bottle moving constantly back and forth between the two of them. The sun goes down at some point, shadows seeping into the cabin around the single light shining in the kitchen.

“If you could do anything other than your risk management job, what would you do?”

Eddie thinks about it for a moment, his face scrunched in contemplation. “Uh. I don’t know, to be honest. I wasn’t ever really passionate about anything. Like, I took a bunch of electives in college, but nothing ever stuck.”

It makes him kind of sad to hear it. “I always imagined you as, like, a doctor or something,” he says. “Or some feisty businessman.”

Eddie snorts. “Feisty.”

Richie knocks his foot into his thigh. “You always gave as good as you got.”

Eddie smiles at that. “What about you, then? What would poor, famous Richie Tozier be if he had one wish?”

“A children’s psychologist,” he says. “Or maybe a social worker. Someone that actually helps people.”

Eddie’s face softens. “I’m sure you help people now.”

“A laugh is cool, but I meant more tangible help.”

Eddie shrugs and drops his eyes. “You helped me.”

Richie’s brows draw together. “What?”

“When I was going through all that shit with my mom when we were kids, you always made me feel better, like I could handle it, like I could last another day. And, um.” His tongue darts across his lip nervously. “I went through a pretty tough time earlier this year. You know, unhappy with my job, unhappy with my marriage. No real friends. My boss gave me a ticket to one of your shows for this case I handled and I barely got myself out of the house to go and it was… life-changing. I didn’t know who you were, or anything, but I got this feeling inside like I wasn’t alone. You did this bit about being lonely and I found myself laughing for the first time in months. That one night kept me from making some really stupid decisions.

“After that, anytime I felt like shit I would watch one of your specials. Sometimes it’s enough just to be able to laugh at things, you know? Remind yourself that not everything is as serious as you think it is.”

Richie’s speechless. “Fuck, Eds.”

Eddie gives him a small, self-deprecating smile. “Your turn.”

Richie’s stuck for a moment, caught off guard by Eddie’s sudden change of subject. Once he gets his mind reoriented, he finds there’s only one question he’s really wanted to ask this whole time. He has to force himself to ask it. “Why did we stop being friends? You know, after it all went down the first time.”

Eddie looks away, a pained expression lining his face. It surprises Richie. “It was just… easier,” Eddie says. Richie notices the way he’s pinching the skin of his arms. “After you had that fight with Bill, it felt like everybody either chose sides or struck out on their own. There was Mike, Bill, and Ben, and then you and Stan, and Beverly moved away, and there was just... me. I had a lot on my mind at the time and couldn’t handle it so I just— didn’t. I pulled away and fell in with other people and tried to pretend that everything that happened that summer never happened, just like everybody else did.”

Richie reaches out and grabs his fingers gently, giving them a squeeze. Eddie finally looks up at him. “I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty,” he says. “I just never really understood. That bothered me the most — the not knowing.”

“I do feel guilty, though. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Rich, and I threw you away because I got scared.” Eddie squeezes his fingers back.

“Yeah, but your aim is shit, isn’t it? I mean, look where I am. Look who I’m with. I’m like a venereal disease, Eds: I’m hard to get rid of for good.”

Eddie laughs, the sound wet with restrained tears. “Trashy as always.”

Richie slips his hand free and smacks him lightly on the thigh. “You’re next, Kaspbrak. Last question, so choose wisely.”

Eddie gets this oddly concerned look is his eye when he says that. Like this is a gravely serious undertaking, and not some game they’re playing half-drunk on wine. Richie’s about to make a comment about it when Eddie looks him dead in the eye and asks, “What happened between you and Sarah Sackheim at prom?”

Richie freezes up for a moment. He’s talking about the moment he saw the another night in his vision, about Richie sitting drunk and alone under the bleachers watching while Eddie danced with his date. He knows he’s talking about that and he can’t fucking believe it. He thought there was a tacit understanding between them, that maybe Eddie couldn’t help what he saw of Richie’s life, but he could sure as hell keep himself from bringing it up. His brow furrows, upset, but Eddie cuts him off. “Please. I know it’s a shit question, but just— please.”

Richie stares at him with heavy eyes. Maybe it’s the wine. Maybe it’s the hurt he feels and the desire to throw it back in Eddie’s face. Maybe he’s just tired of it all. He answers. “I didn’t want to go with her in the first place. I wanted to ask somebody else, but… It wouldn’t have been easy,” he says, echoing Eddie’s sentiment from a moment ago. “And they already had a date, anyway. I was going to skip the whole thing and just get high with some of the burnouts but Stan convinced me not to, said I would regret missing the experience of it. Well, turns out Stan didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about.” Richie looks away, the pain of the memory still fresh after all these years. “It was one of the worst nights of my whole life. It was probably just as bad for Sarah, if not worse — I got so drunk that night that I told her asking her to prom had been a mistake. While we were already there. On the dance floor. She slapped me across the face and ran away crying. I wasn’t even nice enough to go after her.”

Eddie’s voice gets very soft and quiet. “Why were you under the bleachers, Richie? Why were you watching me and Elizabeth?”

He feels like he’s going to explode, like pieces of him are going to cover the room. “It’s called ‘twenty questions,’ Eds, not ‘twenty-one questions.’”

“Rich.”

“You know why,” he says, his voice hard around the shards of glass in his throat. He forces himself to calm down, to shove it away like he always does. “Don’t make me say it.”

Eddie stares at him in silence for a moment. It’s absolutely maddening, but Richie can’t open his mouth to do anything about it. He just sits there and itches beneath the intrusive touch of Eddie’s dark, unreadable eyes.

And then Eddie grabs his hand. “Come on,” he says, and he stands up. When Richie makes no move to follow him, he tugs on his wrist. “Richie, just— trust me, okay?” He gives him a gentle, pleading look. “Come on.”

Richie sighs sharply through his nose and stands up. He lets himself be led into the kitchen, where Eddie deposits him and then leaves, walking back into the living room to mess with something near the tv stand. Richie watches him for a few minutes, eye caught on the tight line of his shoulders, and then music starts playing. Something old and nostalgic. Something deeply, undeniably romantic.

Eddie walks back over to him and gives him a small smile, real but uncertain. “Give me your hand.”

He looks at him with equal uncertainty. He hadn’t thought the wine had affected either of them enough to make them stupid, but maybe he was wrong. He gives Eddie his hand.

Eddie takes it gently and fits his other hand to his waist. Richie locks up beneath the touch. “You didn’t get to dance with the person you wanted to,” Eddie says. He steps in close so their noses are almost touching, and Richie’s mind flashes back to the dream. Eddie’s eyes stare deeply into him, kind and warm and unassuming. “So dance with me now.”

Richie forces himself to relax. “In the kitchen?”

“In the kitchen,” Eddie nods, a smile turning up the corner of his mouth.

Richie’s heart stutters in his chest. He could say no. He could try and maintain some of his dignity, tell Eddie he’s not so pathetic he needs high school roleplay to tend to his trauma. He could, but he finds he doesn’t want to. “I never really learned how to dance,” he admits.

“I can teach you,” Eddie offers. In the dim light of the kitchen, his freckles are just a suggestion. “It’s easy.”

Richie nods. He doesn’t think he’s capable of words at the moment.

Eddie starts moving his feet back and forth in a sway and Richie copies him. They stay just like that for a bit, holding hands and moving to the music, their eyes locked together. Eventually Eddie moves in closer, wrapping his arms around Richie’s back and pressing his cheek into Richie’s chest. Richie blinks in surprise, then feels a warm pang in his chest. He wraps himself around Eddie in turn and rests his head on top of his. He doesn’t know if he’s ever felt like this before — this luminously in love.

Eddie moves his cheek against his shirt like he’s nuzzling closer. His arms around him tighten. “I used to have this fantasy when we were young,” he says quietly. “Really young, like nine or ten. Where we would grow older and you would ask me to the school dance. We’d dance together just like everybody else, and then a slow song would come on and you’d hold me close and put your hand on my cheek and kiss me. Every time a school dance came around, I thought about that. Middle school, high school. Homecoming, winter formal, prom. Even Sadie fucking Hawkins.”

Richie goes quiet inside. He cards his fingers through Eddie’s hair and pulls lightly, just enough to pull him back a few necessary inches. He looks down at him, taking in the terrified openness in Eddie’s face. Something clicks into place.

He leans down and kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they dance to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TdLNiys27A  
think i made myself emo with this one, lads


	8. oh, love, well i've been waiting for you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Explicit rating change is now in effect! Maybe skip this chapter or do some strategic skimming if that's not your thing, bc uhhhh that's the whole thing really. Just a big explicit minefield.

Eddie breathes in sharply and doesn’t move. Richie brushes his thumb across his cheek and pulls back to look at him. Eddie’s eyes, large like a doll’s even as an adult, are blown wide, and there’s a flush high in his cheeks.

“Eds,” he says, and whatever he was going to say gets eaten up as Eddie surges upwards and reconnects their mouths.

Unprepared, Richie groans into the kiss, wrapping an arm around Eddie’s shoulders and pulling him in so there’s no space between them. Eddie’s tongue curls around his and his knees nearly buckle. He drags his hand down the line of his throat, resting his thumb in the hollow of it to feel Eddie’s pulse thundering underneath. Eddie is restless, dragging his hands all over his body, turning his head to change the angle of the kiss. Then he buries his hands in Richie’s hair, pulling slow and heavy through his curls, and every inch of Richie’s skin tingles with it. His breath skitters out into Eddie’s mouth and Eddie’s lips curve into a smile against his.

“Eds,” he says again. His voice is wrecked. “What the fuck is happening?”

Eddie presses a quick, soft kiss to his mouth. He pulls away smiling. “Surely self-proclaimed sex god Richie Tozier knows what kissing is.”

“He does,” Richie nods. “But he’s a little confused as to why the guy he’s had an unrequited crush on since he was eight-years-old is kissing him back.”

Eddie’s smile loses some of its shine. “It was never unrequited,” he says softly. “Just… misunderstood.”

Richie gives him a confused look. Neither of them has moved away from the other, standing with their legs slotted together and their hands gripping each other with a mutual gravity, like being parted would send the solar system flying into disarray. “What do you mean?”

“Richie, I…” He takes in a deep, fluttery breath. “I’ve had a thing for you since we were kids. I just never let myself be honest about it — anytime I had a thought that went above and beyond _friendly_ I would just… kick it away. I mean, that fantasy of you asking me to the dance?” He laughs, airy and ridiculous. “I did some serious fucking mental gymnastics to convince myself that was bro behavior.” Richie snorts and drops his head to Eddie’s shoulder, covertly breathing in the warm body smell of his t-shirt. “When we stopped being friends, it was almost a relief. I didn’t have to worry about that twist in my gut every time you casually threw your arm around my shoulders, or the envy I felt whenever you ran your mouth off about some girl. But with all that gone, I also lost everything else: the movie nights, the bike rides, the afternoons spent pressed hip-to-hip in your bed. The closeness. I spent the rest of middle school and high school chasing after that feeling.”

“And then we graduated.”

“And then we graduated,” Eddie nods. He rubs an absentminded hand over Richie’s back. “We all moved away and forgot each other, like our memories just turned to mist and blew away over the Derry border. 

“But then I got that call from Mike and booked a ticket back home. I fell asleep on the airplane and had that dream I was telling you about, the one with the faceless version of you, except this time I could see you completely, and I remembered. I remembered you and I remembered that feeling and it was like it had been ripening inside me all these years, lying dormant but getting stronger and stronger all the while, and then I stepped into that godforsaken restaurant and it just detonated like a fucking bomb.” He lets out a shaky breath and presses a kiss to the top of Richie’s head.

Richie straightens up to look at him. “When—” He has to stop and collect himself, remind himself that’s it’s over, that it’s behind them. “When we were in the cave and you said you had something to tell me… Was this it?”

Eddie nods. “I’d been trying to tell you ever since that first night back in town. But between everything with Stan and It and all the shit that’s happened since we saw each other last, I just… couldn’t. I’d get out of bed at night under the guise of getting a drink from the bar and stop outside your door. I almost knocked once but chickened out. And then we were in that cave and I knew it might be my last chance and I started to say it but… It would’ve been cruel. To tell you and then die, to change everything and then rip it away.”

It casts everything in a new light, like his whole life has been moved two inches to the right and he’s just now noticed. The gratefulness he feels is overwhelming — that they got this second chance, that their story didn’t end there.

“Did you know about me?” he asks. “About how I felt about you?”

Eddie shakes his head. “No. I think… I think Stan tried to tell me a couple times, tried to get me to see it without spelling it out for me, but it never worked out. I was too dense.”

Richie smiles. His heart breaks a little to hear it. He misses Stan like a phantom fucking limb. He really was the best of them.

“Why now?” he asks. “Why not after all the shit you saw in your dreams?”

Eddie blushes and drops his gaze. Richie traces the flush with his thumb, enraptured. “I thought you might get the wrong idea, like I was just horny and trying to get off with you now that I knew you were down for it. It felt like taking advantage of you.”

Fondness glows bright in his chest like lantern light. Eddie cares about him so much. He thinks he could live off the bliss of this moment forever. “I really fucking love you,” he says. A confession thirty years in the making and it leaves him as easy as a bird leaping off a branch.

Eddie traces the curve of his smile with a reverential thumb. His eyes are bright. “How embarrassing,” he murmurs. Richie rolls his eyes and groans. Eddie laughs, giddy and effervescent, the exact same laugh he had when they were young. The laugh Richie fell in love with. He swoops in and kisses him again, their smiles pressing together. Eddie’s still laughing when he breaks away. “I love you, too,” he says, and Richie’s heart nearly turns to sand. “In case that wasn’t clear.”

He can’t believe they made it here. Past a small town, a child-killing monster, the complete erasure of each other from their memories, the brink of fucking death. All that and they still managed to drag themselves bloody and broken to this very spot, the truth flowing between them like particles of light. Despite a life’s worth of evidence pointing to the contrary, he’s somehow wound up the luckiest man that’s ever lived.

Eddie pushes up on his toes and kisses him again. He opens up to it instantly, melting into Eddie’s body, curving one hand around the side of his throat. He slips the other beneath the hem of his shirt, drawing it up his side until his fingers can slot into bare ribs. Eddie’s breath hitches against his lips. “I’ve never done this before,” he says, lips touching Richie’s with every word.

“With a man?”

Eddie nods, their noses slipping against each other.

“We don’t have to,” Richie says. “If you don’t want to. Or you want to wait.” He’s been waiting for this since he was, like, fifteen. He can wait a little while longer.

“I want to,” Eddie says, his dark eyes pouring into his, and Richie shudders. “I’m just, not— practiced.”

Richie smiles. “I can teach you,” he says, reflecting Eddie’s words from earlier back at him. He leans in and presses a kiss beneath Eddie’s ear. His voice lowers to a murmur. “It’s easy.”

Eddie shivers in his arms. His hands draw up Richie’s arms, settling in the curve where muscle and shoulder meet. Richie drags his mouth across Eddie’s jaw to his lips and they kiss for a moment, slow and languid, taking their time with each other. Eddie pulls back an inch and asks, “Bed?” and Richie nods, reaching up and grabbing Eddie’s hand so he can pull him towards the bedroom. Eddie laughs shakily behind him, and Richie caresses the back of his hand with his thumb.

They walk through the shadowy hall into the bedroom and he turns around to face Eddie, his heart hammering in his chest. “You can change your mind if you don’t want to do this,” he says. It’s almost impossible to imagine that Eddie _would_ want this. He’s spent thirty years hoping for it but thinking it would never happen. He doesn’t know what to make of a reality where Eddie kisses him back and says he loves him, too. It’s happened so often in his dreams that it feels like it can only exist in fantasy.

Eddie gives him a smile, small but earnest. “I know. Issue with that is I really, _really_ want to do this.”

Richie laughs, quietly delighted. He feels bright and young and infinite, like pink, pink taffy being stretched and stretched and stretched. Eddie looks at him with this warm, fond expression ebbing out across his face and kisses him again, chaste and soft. Richie’s cheekbones flare with heat. “What’s first, Teach?”

Richie works hard to tamp down his wild grin into something less mortifyingly eager. “First I do this,” he murmurs, and his fingers slip beneath the hem of Eddie’s shirt and push it up to his arms, palms running up the skin of his stomach. Eddie shivers and lifts his arms so that Richie can pull the fabric all the way off, and then he’s half-naked and the room suddenly feels smaller. Richie swallows and drops the shirt at their feet.

Eddie’s eyes are a deeper color than black, the hunger in them so vast that Richie gets this strange eldritch certainty in his chest that he’s about to be devoured whole. “And then I do this?” Eddie says, voice low and raspy. His fingers go for Richie’s shirt, tugging it up to his navel before he kneels down on the carpet. Richie’s stomach concaves as he sucks in a shuddering breath. Eddie’s hungry eyes meet his, and Richie watches in some sort of frozen spell as Eddie presses a kiss to the base of Richie’s stomach, just above the waistband of his sweatpants. His fingers press higher, inching the shirt up, and he presses another kiss just above his navel. He keeps going higher and higher, lips brushing against the his solar plexus, his sternum, the hollow of his throat, and then Richie’s shirt is off and they’re left staring at each other, breathing hard.

“Fast learner,” Richie jokes. It comes out breathless.

Eddie doesn’t respond to that. He looks at Richie like he has tunnel vision, his single-minded focus in his eyes unbreakable and almost trance-like. “What’s next?” he asks.

Richie takes in a deep breath, the reality of it all starting to slip beneath his flirty veneer. This is _Eddie_. His best friend, the life-long object of his affections. They go any further and there will be no going back; a boundary will be crossed and broken forever. It’s terrifying, but he’s also nearly choking on how intensely he wants to make that trespass.

He steps up and slips his fingers beneath Eddie’s pants — beneath the waistband of his underwear. He stops there and looks Eddie in the eye, searching for any kind of hesitancy or second-thinking. Instead he finds a hazy look about him, like the shimmer of heat in summer air. He tugs the elastic down.

Eddie steps backwards out of the clothing and then he’s naked. They’ve seen each other without clothes before, in gym class locker rooms and warm nights at the quarry with their friends, but never like this. Never with this overwhelming need between them, thick with love.

He pushes Eddie by the shoulders to the bed, and Eddie falls backwards with uncharacteristic ease, never breaking their gaze. Richie is… overwhelmed. He feels a little like he’s going to fucking die if he continues, and a lot like he’s going to die if he stops. He crawls over Eddie and just stays there for a second, looking down at him. Eddie looks back, flushed and beautiful. The pink swathed across his cheeks brings out his freckles. Richie gives in to the urge to lean down and kiss them, pressing his lips chastely to the skin just below his eye. He feels Eddie’s eyelashes against his skin when his eyes flutter closed. He smiles at the sweetness of it.

“Think I failed my lesson,” Eddie murmurs. Richie can feel his breath along his cheek. “Seeing as you’re still in these.” He snaps the waistband of Richie’s sweatpants.

“All in good time,” he says, and then he dips down to Eddie’s mouth. He means for it to be soft, but at the touch of their lips something ignites in them and scorches the hesitancy between them into ash. Eddie kisses him voraciously, fingers digging into his shoulders, body pressing up beneath his. It drives Richie nearly out of his mind. Over thirty years of repressed feelings are pouring out of them and into each other in a never-ending circuit, relieving the desperate tension only to feed it again all in the same instant.

Eddie pulls away to suck down some air and Richie is happy to let him, turning his attention to Eddie’s neck. He laves open-mouthed kisses against his jaw, the column of his throat, the space just below his ear. It disrupts the rhythm of Eddie’s breathing, filling him with a juvenile sense of satisfaction and pride.

“Richie,” Eddie breathes, and the sound of his name coming out of his mouth in that airy, wrecked voice nearly does him in. They haven’t even properly touched each other yet and he feels like he could come just from the sound of it. “Richie, please, I’m fucking dying here.”

Richie nuzzles into his jaw, squeezing his eyes shut against the desire pressing in on him from all sides. He draws a hand up and down Eddie’s side, feeling goosebumps rise up under his touch. He pulls away and looks down at him, taking in the line of moisture at his hairline and the mussed hair at the back of his head from moving against the sheets. Something pitches low in his gut.

“What do you want?” he murmurs. He brushes his fingers gently through Eddie’s hair.

“All of it. Whatever you’ll give me.”

Richie groans and buries his head in Eddie’s hair. “You can’t say shit like that,” he mumbles.

He can hear the smile in Eddie’s voice. His hand comes up to rest at the nape of his neck. “Oh? And why’s that?”

“Because it drives me fucking crazy, that’s why. I want this to be good for you, not just you saying some stupid shit and me coming in my pants like a fifteen-year-old. So cut it out.”

Eddie laughs softly. “Idiot.” He turns his head and presses a kiss to Richie’s cheek.

When he feels like he’s got a hold of himself, he pulls back and looks Eddie in the eye. The vastness of his desire shifts into a shape within him. Eddie swallows, the line of his throat shifting. He brings a hand up to Richie’s mouth and brushes his thumb across his bottom lip. “I saw you once,” he says quietly. “While you were out on a date in high school. I was hanging out with some of my friends at the movie theater, and we stepped outside and I looked over down the alley and there you were, kissing some girl up against the bricks with your thigh between her legs. I felt so sick I had to go home early, and then I spent the night curled up in my bed, playing the image of it over and over again. Your hands under her shirt, your mouth moving against hers, her hands fisted in the lapels of your stupid leather jacket. I kept thinking, What is it about him that makes people want him like that? What makes him so desirable? But I already knew, however much I wanted to pretend I didn’t. You’d been driving me crazy for years.”

Richie doesn’t know what to say for a moment — he’s stunned. He didn’t know Eddie had kept tabs on him after they stopped being friends, the same way he had with Eddie. He never thought Eddie could ever feel anything like jealousy towards him, could ever pine after him the same way he had. It’s a revelation.

He kisses Eddie hungrily. Eddie seems surprised for a moment, stuck still, and then he gives back as good as he gets. Richie reaches down and pushes his sweatpants and briefs down to his thighs, breaking the kiss to clumsily push them the rest of the way off. Eddie’s eyes trail down his body, heavy and burning, and Richie wants to live in the feeling of it forever.

“Took your fucking time,” Eddie says, words hot with playful irritation, and Richie nearly shakes with how arousing it is. Eddie gets his hands on him, mapping out the plane of his back, the curve of his ass, the swell of his thighs.

“Fuck that feels good,” he murmurs, and Eddie smiles. His hands pull up around his ribs and rest on his chest, playing idly with the hair there. The anticipation simmering inside of him reaches a boiling point. He slots his thigh between Eddie’s legs and Eddie moans softly, his eyes fluttering shut. He moves against Richie, his hips moving in stuttering circles, and Richie’s breath hitches, heat rushing through him. He lowers his hips so they’re skin to skin, and the feeling of their cocks pressing together nearly makes him white out.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and Eddie digs his fingers through his hair and pulls him up to his mouth, kissing him deeply. He melts into it and runs his hands down Eddie’s things to the backs of his knees, guiding his legs farther apart so he can slot between them properly. He slips a hand between them and wraps his fingers around Eddie, brushing his thumb over the head and spreading the precum around. Eddie groans and tips his head back, exposing his throat, and Richie gives in to the urge to latch his mouth onto the skin there and suck a mark into it. And then another. And then another.

“Rich, please,” Eddie begs, and Richie tenses involuntarily at the wantonness of it, his fingers tightening around him. Eddie makes a choked-out, guttural sound. “_Rich_.”

“Shh,” he hushes, and he captures his mouth in another kiss, one hand working between them, the other pushing the hair back from his forehead. Eddie twitches and writhes, his legs shifting restlessly against the sheets. And then Richie feels fingers close around him and a wash of fever-bright feeling comes over him, overwhelming. He drops his head against Eddie’s shoulder and just breathes, lost in the sensation of it all. The soft, warm scent of Eddie’s skin surrounds him, though, and it does more harm for his self-control than good. “Eddie.”

“Wanted this for so long,” Eddie says, soft and heady, right into his ear. Richie shudders, and the euphoric pressure inside of him sharpens and becomes nearly unbearable. Eddie twists his wrist a certain way, his fingers drawing insistently along the underside on the upstroke, and Richie’s hands scrabble at his ribcage, his back, his chest. Eddie drags a hand down his spine from the nape of his neck to his tailbone and lower, fingertips trailing a maddeningly soft line down the curve of his ass and back.

“You’re fuckin’ evil,” Richie huffs, and Eddie bites his smile into his neck. If he keeps touching him like this, saturating his every sense, Richie won’t last much longer, and he refuses to let that happen. So he trails his hands down Eddie’s arms to his own hands and grabs them, pushing them up above his head. Eddie makes a little disgruntled sound in protest but lets Richie do as he pleases. Richie rewards him with a long, deep kiss, the slide of their tongues against each other turning his insides molten.

He pulls away and Eddie holds his gaze heatedly, watching as Richie crawls down his body, dragging his hands down his sides, past ribs and waist to thumb across the sharp jutting angles of his hipbones. Richie leans over and runs his teeth along one and Eddie digs his fingers into his hair. Richie dips lower, Eddie’s fingers swirling against his scalp and twining his hair about, and he noses into the crease where thigh and torso meet. Eddie draws in a sharp breath. “Now who’s evil?” he says shakily.

Richie doesn’t respond. He just presses his mouth to the velvet-soft skin there and sucks. Eddie’s fingers pull on his hair reflexively and Richie moans, sucking harder.

“Oh, fuck,” Eddie breathes. Richie looks up at him to find his eyes closed and his brows drawn together. “God, that fucking _mouth_.”

It strikes him as amusing that Eddie’s already reacting like he’s got his cock in his mouth just from this. He nips shallowly at the skin there before moving those few precious centimeters to the left, and at the feeling of Richie’s breath against his skin Eddie’s eyes flutter open. They’re dark as a shark’s, the pupils blown so wide they completely eclipse the irises. He’s breathing heavily, his shoulders rising and falling with it. “Rich,” he says, splintered apart, and Richie drags his tongue from the base of his cock to the tip.

The sound Eddie makes is somewhere between a whine and a groan. It makes Richie’s blood sing. He lathes an open-mouthed kiss to the tip, dragging his tongue along the slit and pressing in. Eddie writhes, his fingers clenching in Richie’s hair, his hips trying to push upwards. Richie holds him down and wraps his mouth around him, sucking on the head.

“_Fuck_,” Eddie hisses. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck _fuck_.”

Richie slides down, his tongue coaxing another string of incoherent swears out of him. At one point Eddie throws his head back and tugs on Richie’s hair and Richie’s hips grind into the mattress of their own volition and suddenly Richie’s own orgasm is buzzing underneath his skin, goading him on. He drags his mouth down the side of Eddie’s cock and back up, sucking on the head again and rubbing his own hips against the sheets, and Eddie’s nails scratch against his scalp. “Rich,” he says, breathing heavy, “I’m not gonna make it much longer.”

Richie hums in response and Eddie’s breath hitches. He tugs on Richie’s hair insistently, clearly trying to communicate something. Richie pulls off and looks at him expectantly.

“Come up here, you dick,” Eddie says, and Richie laughs, crawling up his body. Eddie reaches up and rubs a thumb along his slick, puffy bottom lip, staring at it like a cat about to pounce. “Went too long without kissing you,” he murmurs, and then he leans in and presses their mouths together in a heady slide, his hand drifting down to Richie’s throat. His other hand slips between them and grabs hold of them both, and Richie pants into his mouth. He reaches down and wraps his hand around Eddie’s, and together they set an unforgiving rhythm. In a matter of moments Eddie is gasping, “Rich, into his mouth and coming between them, his body arching off the mattress. It’s too much for Richie: the ecstasy surging inside of him consumes him entirely and he follows after Eddie, his eyes squeezed shut his mouth pressed to his throat, panting. His toes curl and his limbs stretch, his nerves completely overwhelmed.

They stay like that for a moment, their bodies pressed together line for line, chests heaving. Eddie presses a lax, exhausted kiss to his temple. “Not saying it would be a bad way to go, but your gangly, overgrown body is starting to suffocate me.”

Richie huffs and rolls over onto his back so they’re pressed shoulder to shoulder. He laces his fingers through Eddie’s and somehow summons the strength to lift their hands to his lips and press a kiss to the back of his palm. He drops their hands against his chest.

Eddie turns his head to look at him, and Richie does the same. “Was it everything you dreamed it would be?” Eddie teases, his eyes warm and soft.

Richie smiles. “Better. A thousand times better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALL !! The response to the last chapter was unbelievable. I've literally been walking on air ever since I started writing this fic — I can't thank you guys enough ❤  
On a less lovely note, I'm having some potential computer issues so it might be close to a week again before the next chapter is up :/ Fingers crossed. I wrote a hefty chunk of this chapter on my phone like a goddamn animal and it was, shall we say, unpleasant.


	9. i will remember you, of course i would, i would love to

He wakes up the next morning with a body wrapped around him like ribbon, legs twined through his own, a head on his chest, an arm flung over his shoulder, hand beside his head. Eddie stirs on top of him and lifts his head, blinking down at him sleepily, and then a soft, gorgeous smile sprawls across his mouth. “Hi,” he says, and something lovely blooms in Richie’s chest.

“Hi,” he says back, and he leans forward to press a chaste kiss to Eddie’s lips.

Eddie’s face scrunches up. “Before brushing your teeth? That’s unsanitary.”

Richie just rolls his eyes and pushes him off.

They walk out into the kitchen in a haphazard assortment of clothes, Eddie in his briefs and a t-shirt, Richie wearing only his sweatpants. Eddie gets a pot of coffee going and then hops up on the counter to look at him. “How do you feel about going out for breakfast?”

Richie blinks at him. They haven’t been out in civilization since they stopped for groceries on the way here. Part of him doesn’t want to go back and face the world again. The other half of him wants to hold Eddie’s hand across a dining table and invite every person in the tristate area to see. “Sure,” he says. Eddie smiles.

They drink their coffee and pull on some passingly adult clothes and get in the car. The only radio station they can get is some shitty hair metal channel. Richie turns it down low.

They sit in comfortable silence as Richie drives down the never-ending driveway towards the main road. Once the wheels glide onto asphalt instead off kicking up gravel, a sense of peace falls over Richie. A sense of peace which Eddie immediately breaks. “So, uh. Last night.”

His hands tighten reflexively around the steering wheel. “Edward, dearest, did you wait to have this conversation until I was trapped in a moving vehicle?”

He knows without looking over that Eddie’s scrunched his nose up at the use of his given name. Serves him right. “Maybe.”

Richie sighs. “You’re such a shit.”

Eddie laughs. “Look, I just want to clear some things up, and I didn’t trust you not to get uncomfortable and joke your way out of it.”

Richie opens his mouth and then shuts it. He can’t really refute that. “Well, your evil plan worked. What things need clearing up?”

Eddie lets out a breath and rubs his palms against his jeans. “Well, the first thing is that I meant what I said last night—”

“That you were obsessed with me in high school and had a gum shrine of me in your closet?”

Eddie whacks him in the arm. “That I’m in love with you, asshole.”

Richie’s mouth goes dry. “Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘_oh_.’ Idiot.” Eddie breathes in and out, recollecting himself. “What I’m trying to say is that I want to be with you. Waking up with you this morning was the best I think I’ve ever felt and I want to do it every single day until the end of time. Assuming you want that, too.”

Richie feels a familiar tickle in the back of his throat but he swallows it down. “Now who’s the idiot,” he says, sardonic and fond. “I can’t believe you need any more evidence to prove how deeply and pathetically I’ve been pining after you.”

He looks over at Eddie briefly and Eddie gives him a smile. “I’m dense, remember? You gotta lay everything out for me here, Rich.”

“Eddie Kaspbrak, there is nothing in the whole goddamn universe I want more than to be with you. Is that clear enough?”

“But, like. Do you want to date me?”

Richie fucking laughs. “Yes, of fucking course I want to date you. I want to live with you and get a dog with you and watch you eat whatever allergen-free food you attempt to digest in the mornings while I shove Hot Pockets into my body ad nauseum.”

Eddie snorts. “Okay, cool,” he says, and Richie looks over to catch the dopey grin on his face. “Just checking.”

“But, um. What about your… you know. Myra.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. He sounds surprised, like he’d forgotten something. Richie’s stomach drops. A whole scenario plays out in his head, unbidden: Eddie feeling guilty, Eddie backtracking, Eddie saying he didn’t mean it, Eddie flying back to New York and leaving him alone. But then Eddie says, “When you fell asleep on the couch the other night after the lake, I called a lawyer friend of mine. She’s sending divorce papers to my office in the city. And I… I called Myra, too. Told her I had something serious to talk to her about when I go back. I, um.” He looks down at his hands. “I didn’t want to tell her over the phone. She doesn’t deserve that, you know? We both have our flaws, but she’s not a bad person.”

“No. No, of course not,” Richie says. He reaches over and slips his hand into Eddie’s. Eddie squeezes his palm.

Richie is, in a word, overwhelmed. Eddie’s leaving his wife. Eddie wants to be with him. There’s a future somewhere down the line where Richie’s name is listed next to Eddie’s on an apartment complex intercom, where their toothbrushes sit together all day in the same little cup. The things he’s been dreaming about since he was a kid are coming to fruition, almost like he’s pulled them out of his mind and into the world, gave them shape and made them real. He almost can’t believe it.

“So what exactly does this mean, then?” he asks, feeling nervous and fluttery. His palms are sweaty around the steering wheel.

“Hey, I just took the mortifying step of telling you that I ‘_like_ like you’ and want to be your boyfriend. This part’s on you.”

Richie’s a grown ass man. He’s been in relationships before. But hearing Eddie call himself his boyfriend, even in that half-joking tone, even as juvenile as the term is, makes him feel nearly ill with happiness.

He doesn’t even really think before he says it. He just opens his mouth and lets the feeling sprinting through him like a rabbit do its thing. “Move in with me.”

Eddie turns to look at him. “What?”

Richie refuses to let his nerves get the better of him. “Yeah. New York is so fucking gray, dude. It can’t be good for you. Move to LA. Or— or I’ll sell my place and we can move somewhere together. San Diego. Austin. Fuckin’ Mars, I don’t care.”

“Yeah?” Eddie asks, and Richie hears the soft, barely-there smile in his voice.

Richie isn’t so inhibited; he grins outright. “Yeah. I don’t want to waste another day living without you.”

Eddie goes quiet. When Richie sneaks an anxious glance at him, he finds him staring out the window, the corner of his smile visible. “Didn’t know you were such a romantic, Rich.”

“Yeah, well,” he stumbles, feeling exposed. “Seems like there’s a lot we never knew about each other.”

Eddie hums in reply.

They’re both quiet after that. A few minutes later Eddie’s phone directs them into the parking lot of the nearest diner. Richie puts the car in park and reaches for the buckle of his seatbelt, but is intercepted by Eddie, who leans across the console, grabs him gently by the chin, and kisses him.

When he pulls back a moment later, Richie raises an eyebrow at him and asks, “What was that for?”

Eddie just shrugs, smiling. “Because I wanted to.” And then he pushes open his car door and steps outside.

Richie stares after him for a moment, his brain slowly coming back online. He smiles and follows after him.

The diner is fairly empty for a summer morning. There’s a group of twenty-somethings dressed in rumpled hoodies and sweatpants piled in a booth in the corner, and a few older men that look very local are eating eggs at the bar. There’s a big family taking up two tables by the windows, and what seems to be the only waitress in the building is taking their order. She sees the pair of them come in and gestures for them to take a seat somewhere. Eddie picks one of the booths and Richie follows him in.

Watching Eddie fidget against the vinyl seat, something occurs to him. “I just had a thought.”

“Wow. Miracles do happen.”

Richie kicks him in the shin. “Asshole.”

Eddie winces and laughs. “What was this ‘thought?’”

“This is kinda like… a date.”

Eddie’s smile softens down to coals and embers. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, we already sort of skipped to the ‘I love you, move in with me’ stage, but… yeah.”

“I like that,” Eddie says. “Our first date.”

They’re thirty-something years old and have known each other for nearly just as long and this is their first date. It’s fucking ridiculous. It’s very them.

The waitress walks over and interrupts before Richie starts delivering romantic soliloquies across the table. He’s grateful.

“What are we having?” she asks.

“Sorry, I haven’t even looked at the menu yet,” Eddie says. A flush crawls up his neck from under the collar of his shirt. Richie bites the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. “Can I get a coffee, please?”

“Sure. And you?” She turns to look at him with bored, tired eyes.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” he says, the grin escaping. Eddie’s foot moves under the table and gives him a bruise to match his own. The waitress looks down at them, deeply unimpressed. Then she walks off wordlessly to the kitchen.

Eddie bangs his head against the tabletop. “I hate you.”

Richie slouches back against the vinyl and crosses his arms over his chest, smug. “That’s not what you said last night.”

Eddie starts up a rhythm, thunking his forehead against the laminate and making their silverware rattle. The waitress shows up with their coffee and Eddie straightens up so fast it makes Richie’s spine hurt just to watch it. She gives him an odd look and sets down their coffee pot and mugs before walking off again, wide-eyed. Richie breaks down in snickers.

“I want to die,” Eddie mumbles, hollow-voiced and white-faced.

“She probably wants that too,” he nods. Eddie pours himself a mugful of coffee and takes a long drink from it, wincing when he sets it back down on the table.

“What, no good?”

“No, I just burnt the shit out of my tongue.”

Richie sets about pouring himself his own cup. “I can take a look at it later. Administer some first aid.”

Eddie chokes on a laugh. He catches Richie’s eye and gives him a warm look. “Pretty forward for a first date.”

“I’m just doing the right thing,” he says, grinning.

“Sure.”

“Are you calling my honor into question, Mr. Kaspbrak? Because if so, I must inform you that I am a good, decent sort of fellow and cannot abide by such nastiness.”

Eddie’s eyebrows climb, a disbelieving smile slowly spreading across his face. “Really, Mr. Tozier? Because you seemed quite insistent on abiding by such nastiness last night.”

Richie blinks at him, a brutal flush scorching across his cheeks. Eddie’s eyes dart down to catch it, delighted. Richie made the same sort of joke just a moment ago; Eddie throwing around a casual reference to what happened between them last night shouldn’t make him blush like a prudish virgin. And yet.

The waitress comes back and gives the two of them a look of unease. Richie coughs and casts his eyes down to the menu.

“Ready?” she asks, and Richie can hear the pleas to a higher power underscoring her words.

“Uh, sure,” Eddie says, his eyes taking quick stock of the menu. “I’ll have the, uh… the gluten-free pancakes, please.”

She nods and turns to Richie, looking at him warily. “And you?”

“The gluten-full pancakes for me.”

Eddie rolls his eyes at him. The waitress just narrows her eyes in a thoroughly finished expression and collects their menus before walking away wordlessly.

“Might as well have ordered a side of saliva with that. Jesus.”

He shrugs. “I bring out the best in people.”

“Depends on who you ask.”

Richie looks at him. “And if I ask you?”

Eddie’s face softens, the ribbing melting out of him. “I’m the best I’ve ever been.”

Richie smiles. He bites back the urge to make some crude, teasing comment and instead lets Eddie’s words settle between them. It lasts for a nice, quiet moment, and then Eddie eventually starts idly messing with the salt and pepper shakers, never one to sit still. “What is it that people usually do on first dates?” he asks. “It’s been so long I’ve forgotten. Not that I ever had a whole lot of practice in the first place.”

“Me neither,” Richie admits. Surprise flares across Eddie’s face. “I’ve only ever dated a couple of people. From what I hear from the rumor mill, though, typically you talk to each other. Get to know one another.

Eddie gasps and brings a scandalized hand to his chest. “Communication and understanding? How dreadful.”

Richie nods solemnly. “Horrific.”

“I guess if we must…” Eddie gives him a wry smile. “When did you first realize you had a crush on me?”

He wasn’t expecting that. He rolls with it, though, curious to see where it leads them. “Uh. Well, I think it sort of developed slowly over time. But I remember there was this one night where the three of us, you, me, and Stan, were sleeping over at Bill’s place and you got a really bad nose bleed and I pulled you into the bathroom and you sat down on the toilet while I patched you up. You had your head tilted back and you were babbling all this nonsense about hemophilia in this wet, nasally voice while I helped you press toilet paper against your nose and cleaned the dried blood on your face with a wet rag, and I just felt… nice. Like I wanted to stay in that ugly beach-themed bathroom forever, just you and me and the seashell décor.

“I remember after I finished, it made me sad, so I lied and told you that I’d missed a spot above your lip so I could keep at it. And then you sneezed because the rag tickled your nose and you started bleeding again and we had to start all over, and it was like I’d been granted a wish. I played it back in my mind that night after everyone had fallen asleep, and I realized that it wouldn’t have been like that with Bill or Stan, that I didn’t feel that little bolt of happiness every time I touched them. That the way I felt about you was different.”

Eddie gives him a long look. “Wow. I wasn’t expecting something so… sweet.”

Something falls in Richie’s stomach. Shame and embarrassment flare hotly inside of him, turning him sour. “Despite what all you’ve seen in my head the past couple days, not every thought I’ve ever had about you is sexual.”

Eddie’s hand darts out across the table and grabs his own, his eye wide. “No, no, I know that,” he says quickly. Richie meets his gaze, keeping his expression closed and neutral, as if he can preserve any semblance of dignity here. “It’s just— you’ve never exactly been Mr. Innocent. I mean, you were always rattling your mouth off about watching some dirty movie on cable after your babysitter fell asleep, or about how some girl a few grades above us was giving out hand jobs behind the track for $20 during lunch. I thought maybe… I don’t know.”

Richie gives him a flat look. “I’m gay, Eds. I was overcompensating.”

Eddie cringes and gives him a weak smile. “Right. Sorry.”

Richie sighs and brushes his thumb across Eddie’s hand. He feels stupid. “Don’t be. I’m just being touchy.”

Eddie shakes his head and squeezes his hand. “You’re allowed to be. I know it wasn’t easy.” His voice softens. “I know it hurt you.”

They hold hands for a moment, the past running like a reel of film between them. Richie shoos it away a moment later with a forced smile, not wanting either of them to wade out too deep into dark waters. “What about you? When did you first realize I was irresistible?”

Eddie thinks about it for a moment. “Like I said earlier, I was in denial about it for a long time. Any time I caught myself staring at you too long or felt anything warm towards you, I just pushed it down and turned the other way. When everything happened with It — the first time around — I couldn’t keep it down. Every glance and touch and feeling came rushing up like a fucking geyser and I remember thinking, If something happens to him, nothing will be the same. I think I realized then that what I felt for you was more than friendship — it’s why I pulled away after you got into it with Bill, instead of sticking with you and Stan. I couldn’t spend another day sitting next to you feeling what I felt, not when being together the way I wanted was impossible.”

Hearing it, Richie can’t help but think of the what if’s: what if they’d been born later, or met each other in college, or lived in a different town? Would everything have played out in the same way? Would they have gotten together sooner, wasted less of their lives without one another? He knows it’s a useless train of thought, that nothing can come out of it, but it doesn’t make it easier to let go and move on.

Fortunately, the waitress rears her head again and sets down their plates. “Anything else?” she asks, and Richie can tell by the tone of her voice that if he were to actually ask her for anything she’d untie her apron and walk straight out the door. “No, thanks, we’re good,” he says, and offers her a smile. She eyes him warily and walks off. Eddie gives him an amused look and retracts his hand so he can start digging into his pancakes.

They eat in silence for a minute or two, and then Eddie takes a sip from his coffee and says, “How about a lighter memory?”

Richie’s happy for the change in subject. He thinks about it for a second and then smiles. “Alright, how’s this: sophomore year you got a valentine from a secret admirer.”

Eddie gives him a confused look, his brows slowly drawing together. “Yeah, I did. How did you—”

“That was me.”

Eddie sinks back against the booth. His eyes narrow in suspicion. “Fuck off.”

“It’s true. I gave some eighth grader on the bus a dollar for it, and then I filled it out myself. ‘I think about you all the time. I want to kiss you and hold your hand in front of everybody. Happy Valentine’s Day.’ I slipped it into your locker during Bio.”

“Holy shit.” Eddie looks stunned. “Teddy Rushman told me it was probably Gretta playing a prank on me.”

“Nope, just me, your friendly neighborhood gay kid in love with his estranged best friend.” He goes back to cutting up his pancakes.

“I can’t believe you did that.”

“Mmhmm. Never underestimate the lengths a pining asshole will go to to keep hope alive.”

Eddie’s quiet for a moment, and then he says, “I still have it, you know — the valentine. It’s tucked in the back of one of my yearbooks.”

Richie blinks at him. After nothing ever came of it, he’d assumed Eddie had just tossed it. “Huh.”

“I can’t believe you’ve been a secret romantic this whole fucking time. You, Trashmouth Tozier.”

Richie grins. “Believe it, baby. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

A deep, ruddy flush blooms up across Eddie’s whole face at record speed. Richie takes it in with giddy delight, putting two and two together with quiet marvel. “Holy fuck.” Eddie scowls down at his coffee, embarrassed. “You really liked that, huh? Wouldn’t have figured you for a pet name kinda guy.”

“Shut up,” Eddie mutters, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, the vinyl creaking.

“Aw, baby, don’t be like that.”

Eddie turns redder and kicks him viciously under the table. Richie cackles. “Fair warning: I fully intend on exploiting this newfound discovery at every given opportunity.”

“You’re such a fucking dick.”

“Mmm, but you love it, don’t you, sweetheart?” He takes a smug bite of his pancakes.

Eddie’s hands tighten in a white-knuckled grip around his silverware. “I hope you choke.”

Richie just laughs.

He pays for their meal at the counter, cracking a joke about Eddie being his kept woman, which earns him a sharp jab in the ribs, and then they get back in the car. They drive for a while, bickering warmly over everything and nothing, when Eddie sees a sign for a touristy giftshop and tells him to pull over.

It’s like every other roadside giftshop in this country: stuffy and old-smelling with a wall of ugly t-shirts and stands of knickknacks that toe the line between tacky and creepy. He walks around with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, perplexed as to what they’re doing here. They spent nearly two decades in Maine, and Eddie’s been to this town a handful of times before; there’s no novelty to it. It’s just a little odd, is all.

He finds Eddie staring up at the t-shirts and wraps his arms around him from behind, resting his chin in the dip of his shoulder. “If you’re running low on shirts, you could’ve just asked to borrow one of mine.” If he’s being honest, he wishes Eddie had done just that. The idea of Eddie mindlessly tugging on one of his shirts in the morning makes something warm and pleasant hum through him.

“It’s not that,” Eddie says. His hands come up to cover Richie’s, fingers curling around his palms. “I just want something physical to remind me of all of this, you know?”

And then Richie gets it: Eddie wants an object to serve as a memory outside of his own mind, something to commemorate all of this that can’t be redacted. Memory is something they can’t put too much faith in these days.

Richie points to a neon pink monstrosity with text reading ‘The Maine Attraction’ and an arrow pointing to the neck hole. “That one’s nice.”

Eddie snorts and hangs his head. Richie presses a kiss to the exposed nape of his neck.

In the end they both leave the shop with something, Eddie with a sweatshirt and Richie with a swiss army knife with a lobster painted on one side and the town’s name on the other. The drive home is easy, the windows rolled down and the radio off. Mountain air drifts through Richie’s hair and washes down his arms like water. He takes a quick glance at Eddie and finds him with his elbow propped up on the door frame and his chin in his hand, letting the air run over him with his eyes closed.

When they make it back to the cabin, Eddie drags him inside by his sleeve with youthful impatience and Richie laughs, light and free. Eddie winds his arms around his neck in the kitchen and kisses him with a smile. Richie slips his hands under his shirt and rests them on his hips, feeling for all the world like this is what he was born to do, like his whole life has just been a series of dominos he had to topple to make this image a reality.

They make out lazily for a good portion of the morning, moving from the center of the kitchen to Richie lifting Eddie up on the counter top and stepping between his legs, to Eddie pushing him back and dragging him over to the couch, the two of them kissing while some public access show plays on the tv behind them. Eventually they wind up lying down with Richie’s legs hanging off the edge of the arm rest and Eddie pinned between the back of the couch and Richie’s shoulder, winding up halfway on top of Richie like he somehow always manages to do. The kisses turn lazier and lazier until Eddie gives him one last chaste press of lips and then sets his chin down on Richie’s sternum, looking at him.

“What?” he asks, smiling.

Eddie smiles back and scrunches up his nose. “Nothing. Just sending a quiet prayer of thanks to God for making you grow into your face.”

He rolls his eyes and runs a hand idly down Eddie’s back. "I think we’re past the pigtail-pulling stage here, Eds. If you think I’m hot, you can just say so.”

Eddie groans and buries his face in his chest. Richie laughs, the shaking of his body shaking Eddie, too. “This is going to be miserable,” Eddie mumbles. “I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself.”

“You know, I’m having a hard time remembering myself. What was it again? That you like me? That you lobe me? No, that doesn’t sound right.”

Eddie props his jaw up on his hand and smiles down at him softly. “I think I remember now.”

“Oh?” He props himself up on his elbows.

Eddie bites his lip and nods. “Mmhmm.”

“Care to share with the class, Mr. Kaspbrak?”

“Think it has to do with the fact that I’m stupidly in love with you.”

Richie grins. “Oh, right. That’s it.”

Eddie closes the remaining space between them and kisses him. Richie’s just carded his fingers through his hair when his phone starts ringing in his pocket. He breaks the kiss and drops his head back against the couch with a groan. Eddie fishes his phone out for him, his hand moving about in his front pocket with unnecessary curiosity.

“You’re a sadist,” Richie grumbles and Eddie laughs, finally pulling his phone out and placing it in his hand. Richie holds it up above his face and reads the screen. Bill.

He gives Eddie a look and Eddie looks back at him like he knows. Richie answers, pressing the phone to his ear. “Hey, man.”

“Hey, Rich,” Bill says, his voice kind but laden with purpose. “How are things with you and Eddie?”

“Well, considering I still have a head to talk to you with, I’d say they’re going pretty well.” Eddie pinches his side for that. Richie gives him an irritated look and gets one in return.

“Look, I know you think we did a shitty thing asking him to leave, and I don’t disagree with you. It was really hard having to ask that of him, and I hate that we had to, but we did. I hope you both can sympathize with that, but I understand if you can’t.”

Richie looks at Eddie, at the brave set of his jaw, at the forgiveness and understanding in his bright eyes so blessedly full of life. Eddie nods at him. He laces their fingers together. Richie sighs. “Yeah, man. We get it. I’m… I’m sorry for the shit I said to everyone about us not being real friends. I was just… well, you know.”

“Yeah,” Bill says, and the understanding in his voice settles some of Richie’s frayed edges. “I know.”

After a moment of silence, Richie gets fidgety and asks, “So, uh, why are you calling? Not that I don’t love the raw sexual energy of these phone chats, but…”

Eddie bites back a laugh, his grin seeping out at the edges. Bill laughs on the other end. “I’m a married man, Richie.”

Richie lowers his voice to something simpering and breathy. He catches Eddie’s eye. “So are all my other clients, Mr. Denbrough.” Eddie gives him a flat look, though it’s belied by his smile.

“Fuck off,” Bill laughs.

“No, but really. What’s the occasion?”

“I wanted to check in on Eddie. See how he’s doing.”

Richie looks at him, taking in his messy dark hair, the fading circles beneath his eyes, the features he knows so well. “He’s doing well. Same old Eddie.”

“Nothing strange?”

Something pinches inside of him. “Nothing to worry about.” Eddie’s eyes go a bit distant, gazing off at some point over his shoulder.

“That doesn’t really answer the question, Rich.”

“It’ll be hard to explain over the phone. How about— how about we all meet up again? Maybe the buffet on the edge of town? That way there won’t be any miscommunication.”

Bill thinks about it for a moment, and Richie realizes he’s been gripping Eddie’s hand when Eddie squeezes back reassuringly. “Sure, Rich. That sounds great. How about tomorrow?”

Tomorrow. This little bubble of time in the mountains is coming to an end, and so soon after it started. He knows it doesn’t mean anything, that Eddie wants to have a life together after they leave, but it still makes him sad, like something golden is coming to an end. He feels a warm press against the back of his palm and looks down to see Eddie kissing their intertwined hands, the gesture full of understanding. Richie takes in a deep breath and lets it out. “Sure,” he says, and forces himself to smile. “It’s a date.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love them i love them i love them i lo-


	10. some things last a long time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> got absolutely SLAMMED by papers lads but we're back on our bullshit now !!! also, warning for more mature/explicit content

“What are we going to do?”

Richie sets his phone on the coffee table and lifts his head up to look at Eddie. “About what?” he asks.

Eddie gives him a firm look. “About me. About whatever the fuck is wrong with me.”

Richie pushes himself up on his elbows, his brow furrowing. The movement dislodges Eddie a bit and he has to catch himself on his arms, palms sinking into the couch cushions.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Richie says, leaving no room for doubt between his words. “How many times are we going to go over this, Eddie?”

“As many times as it takes for you to realize that whatever’s happening between us doesn’t magically erase the fact that I turn into a psychic jack-o-lantern when the lights go out.”

“You should really consider a career in poetry.”

“Fuck off, asshole, I’m trying to have a genuine conversation with you.”

Richie makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Converse away.”

Eddie gives him a sharp look, which morphs into something more introspective and nauseous. Richie feels his insides twist and tighten. “What happens when we sit down at that restaurant and Bill asks us if anything strange has happened the past few days?” Eddie asks.

“Well, I think I’ll lead with us declaring our gay love for one another and then segue into some of the sexy bits—”

Eddie punches him hard in the shoulder. “I’m serious, Rich,” he says, but a laugh slips through the cracks and undermines him completely. He meets Richie’s eyes with a soft smile at the edges of his mouth, which slowly slips away. “We can’t lie to them about what’s been going on — the visions I’ve been having from your past, the dream sharing. We have to tell them, and I don’t…” He sighs. “I don’t know how they’re going to react.”

“They’re your friends, Eds. They love you.”

“They’re also the only people standing between Derry and a supernatural force of kid-murdering evil. If they think I’m…” He trails off, a miserable expression crawling across his face.

“Hey, hey, hey, no,” he hushes, grabbing Eddie gently by the jaw and aligning their gazes. “That’s not going to happen.”

“How?” he says, and the hopelessness in his voice crushes Richie’s heart into a fine powder. “What are we going to say to convince them? We don’t know shit about what’s happening to me — whether it’s good or bad, why it’s happening, what it means. We can’t just show up with no answers and tell them to trust us.”

“We have to,” Richie says with uncharacteristic seriousness. “And they’re just going to have to believe us.”

Eddie’s eyes squeeze shut and his hands fist in the fabric of Richie’s shirt. Richie pulls him in close, wrapping an arm around his back and threading his fingers through the hair at the back of his head, his palm pressing against the fragile curve of his skull. “It’s going to be fine.”

Eddie presses his face into the hollow of his neck and breathes rough and damp against his throat. Richie feels the turbulent rise and fall of his chest beneath his arm and just stands there holding him, frustrated by his own uselessness. He doesn’t know what to say or what to do. All he wants to do is keep Eddie safe and make him happy and he’s fucking powerless to do either.

He pulls Eddie back a bit and looks down into his panicked eyes, the sweep of his eyelashes wet with unshed tears. “I lost you once and it killed me, Eddie. I failed you then and I’ll never let it happen again. Whatever happens tomorrow, I’ll be right there beside you, and the two of us are leaving that restaurant together, okay? No matter what.”

Eddie’s eyes flicker between his own, dark and terrified. Richie gives in to the panicky feeling in his chest and crushes his mouth against Eddie’s. Eddie lets out a miserable, pained sort of sound and Richie clutches him closer, both hands buried in his hair. Eddie kisses him desperately, his hands scrabbling against his back, pressing against him like they can’t be close enough, like all he wants in the world is to squeeze them together into one body. His hands slip up Richie’s back and over his shoulders, sliding up his neck to cradle his jaw. He kisses him like it’s his last night on earth and it just makes Richie more unhinged.

“Eds,” he breathes against his mouth between kisses, “Eds—”

Eddie pulls him in by the hair and silences him, occupying his tongue so whatever words he was about to say just dissolve. Richie’s hands loosen around his hair and trail down his back to grab Eddie’s hips. Eddie breathes shakily into his mouth and wraps a leg around him, and then Eddie’s lifting himself up and Richie’s hands jerk down to his ass to catch him, Eddie’s legs wrapping tight around his waist. He presses closer, curling around him like a snake, and Richie just hugs him closer.

“Richie,” Eddie breathes shakily, and Richie can’t handle the sound of it — he presses frantic kisses to Eddie’s chin, his cheeks, his temples. “I know,” he says. Eddie quakes in his arms and dips his head down to capture Richie’s mouth again. His fingers pull urgently at Richie’s hair and Richie gets the message; he walks them to the bedroom, fumbling the door knob open and barely managing to get them to the bed on his wobbly legs. He drops Eddie down on the mattress, his newly freed limbs flailing with the fall, and then immediately presses back into him, covering his body inch for inch with his own. He cages him in and Eddie pushes up against him, pressing a knee against Richie’s dick. Richie’s breath skitters out against Eddie’s jaw and Eddie winds his fingers back through Richie’s hair, keeping him in place. They move against one another, breathing hard and fast, and Richie feels like the fear scorching through him is running a circuit between the two of them, so cold it burns, scorching their insides to ash until all that’s left is a shapeless, ever-expanding desperation. He can feel the need between them spurring them on — this need to see this to its end, to exorcise whatever terrible, frantic hopelessness has come over them.

“Rich,” Eddie gasps, and Richie wraps his arms around his back and buries his face in his throat as Eddie comes, his pulse fluttering fast and fragile against Richie’s temple. Eddie’s leg slips against the blankets and Richie’s hips chase it, grinding down against it.

He feels something wet against the skin of his face and doesn’t quite register it for a moment. It takes a few seconds to break through the thick haze of emotions crashing over him, and then his brows furrow and he pulls away from the heat of Eddie’s neck to look at him, his hips stilling. There are tear tracks on Eddie’s face.

He jolts up immediately, kneeling over Eddie in concern. “Eddie—”

“I’m fine,” Eddie says, eyes closed and brows wrinkled in embarrassment. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“No, you don’t have anything to be sorry for.” Richie brushes his thumbs gently beneath Eddie’s eyes, wiping away the tears.

Eddie opens his eyes and stares up at him dolefully. “I’m so sick of being afraid. I don’t want to be a fucking coward anymore.”

“You’re not a coward.”

Eddie gives him a thoroughly unconvinced look.

“You’re not,” Richie insists. “You’re fucking brave, Eds. Whatever you feel right now, I know you’re still going to walk into that buffet and sit down in front of everyone and take whatever judgment they pass. After everything you’ve been through, you’re still trying to do what’s best for everyone else, no matter what that means for you. I don’t know anybody else that strong.”

Eddie trembles and a fresh wave of tears shines in his eyes. He wraps his arms around Richie and breathes out a shuddering breath against his collarbone. “Thank you,” he says, and Richie rubs a hand between his shoulders.

They stay like that for a long moment, holding each other and slowly pulling themselves back together, heart rates calming and emotions settling back down.

“I’m sorry I freaked out,” Eddie says. He slips a hand between them and trails it down Richie’s stomach, migrating South. Richie catches his wrist before he goes any further than his waistband. Eddie pulls back and looks at him with furrowed brows. “But you didn’t—”

“I’m okay,” Richie says, smiling softly at him. _Always thinking about everybody else. _“Really, I’m good.”

Eddie gives him a pinched, wary look. Richie laughs gently at him and presses a chaste kiss to his temple. “You’re a real sweetheart, you know that?”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he smiles. Richie thumbs the exposed skin just above his hip where Eddie’s shirt has ridden up. “Be right back,” he says, and he slips out of the bed.

He walks to the bathroom and runs the sink until the water warms before wetting a rag and wringing it out. He walks back to the bedroom. “Take off your pants. Underwear too.”

Eddie arches an eyebrow at him.

“You just came in your jeans like a teenager. I know you’re about two seconds away from dousing yourself in hand sanitizer.”

Eddie, surprisingly, complies without comment, a blush coloring the tops of his cheeks. Richie sits down beside him on the bed after he settles back down and runs the rag over his skin, drawing it gently over his body. When he’s done, he leans over and rifles through Eddie’s bag, finding a clean pair of underwear and handing them over. Eddie shimmies into them and Richie throws the rag into the laundry bin in the corner of the room. A hand wraps around his arm and he turns back to Eddie, who’s sat up and looking at him with soft eyes. He leans in and kisses Richie, the terrible urgency from earlier burnt away, leaving something warm and overwhelmingly sweet in its wake.

When Eddie pulls away, he gives Richie a small, intimate smile. “Thank you.”

Richie brushes his thumb across his cheekbone. “For what?”

“For being you,” Eddie says.

Richie smiles. “Any time.”

Eddie pulls him over his body back into the bed and Richie laughs, cracking a joke about the hulk-like strength hidden away in that tiny body, which gets him a flick to the ear. They curl around each other and twine their limbs together, Richie murmuring a steady stream of his usual nonsense until Eddie’s huffs of laughter fade away, replaced with cute little sleep sighs. Richie brushes his fingers lightly over his hair and smiles. He lets him nap for the rest of the afternoon.

By the time they show up to the restaurant the next morning, everybody else is already there, piled into a long booth by the window. The urge to bolt hits Richie hard and he nearly gives into it on reflex. Eddie’s hand presses into his lower back, though, firm and steady, and the various bits of his spine unlock. He walks towards the booth with Eddie behind him, feeling for all the world like he’s walking into Death’s open arms.

Mike sees them first and smiles one of his honey-sweet smiles at them, so kind and warm that Richie almost loses his nerve again. Guilt over their last encounter stirs in his stomach like a viper, coiling around with sickening dread. The things he said. The way he acted. Eddie slips his hand into his, weaving their fingers together

“Hey, you two,” Mike says. Bev, Ben, and Bill turn their heads to look at them.

Richie gives him an ill-fitting smile. “Heya, Mikey.”

“Oh, you’re here!” Bev says. She smiles up at them, so easily, effortlessly beautiful that Richie’s heart swells. “Good. I’m starving.”

“You guys didn’t have to wait for us,” Eddie says. There’s something off about the way he says it, small and thin like he’s trying to squish himself out of sight. Richie hates it. He squeezes his palm hard, trying to communicate both ‘I’m here’ and ‘cut it out’ in equal measure. Eddie looks up at him and Richie looks back, staring into his doe-ish eyes and realizing how grateful he is that they’re both here in this moment together, that no matter what happens they have each other. The certainty he feels about that stirs up something warm and sappy inside of him.

“Of course we did. Some of us actually have manners, however foreign a concept that may be to you two.”

Richie blinks and turns back to the table. Bev has a shrewd look on her face, her eyes bright and a small smile curling in the corner of her mouth. It makes him feel transparent in a way he hasn’t since he was eleven. He shrugs and drops his gaze. "Manners are overrated.”

They all laugh at him with differing expressions of irony.

“Of course you think that,” Ben says.

“Listen, fuckers, the longer you bully me, the longer it takes for you to eat.”

Bev stands up and pats his shoulder. “I’ll never understand how you manage to be so stupid and yet so wise.”

Eddie snorts beside him and Bev grins at him over Richie’s shoulder before walking off towards the buffet. Ben climbs out after her and walks off with Bill and Mike. Richie and Eddie stay rooted in place for a moment.

“They’re still our friends,” Eddie says eventually. Richie glances down at him to find him staring at them where they’re waiting in line. “They still want the best for us.” He sounds like he’s trying to make himself believe it.

Richie doesn’t know whether Eddie’s worried about their response to their relationship or to his strange new sleeping habits. He answers for both: “They’re not going to burn you at the stake, Eds.” _I won’t let them_.

“It’s been so long since we were all Losers together. We’re all different people now.”

Richie nudges him in the ribs. “You and I aren’t too different. Who’s to say they are?”

Eddie gives him a soft smile, looking like he’s not totally convinced but not being stubborn about it either. Richie wraps his arm around his shoulders and pulls him against his side. “Come on, Short Stack,” he says, changing the subject. There’s no use in dragging their shared anxiety out further. “We better grab some food before those assholes eat the whole buffet.” Eddie sinks into him easily and lets Richie push him around.

“Do you think they have anything gluten free?”

Richie just laughs.

Once they’re all seated with copious piles of food in front of them, the various conversations they’d been having in line peter out and a heavy atmosphere settles over the table.

“So,” Bill says, his eyes flickering between the table top and the pair of them.

Eddie grasps Richie’s hand under the table. Richie turns to look at him and lowers his voice. “Do you want to do it, or do you want me to?”

Eddie’s cold-coffee eyes sweep over his face and he smiles, small but appreciative. “I should do it.”

Richie squeezes his hand one last time and then sits back.

Eddie remains quiet for a moment, looking around the table at all of their friends. Richie thinks for a second that he won’t be able to get the words out, but then he takes in a quick breath and says, “Something’s wrong with me.”

Richie sees Bev’s hand tighten over Ben’s on the tabletop.

“What do you mean?” Mike asks, careful and kind.

“The past few nights, since everything that happened in the cave, I’ve been going into some sort of state when I go to sleep. When I’m in it I can see other people’s memories. And their dreams.”

The table falls silent. Richie’s eyes trail from face to face, watching their expressions shudder in turn, sinking deep into their thoughts. Ben is the first one to emerge, asking, “How does it work?”

“I’m not sure,” Eddie says, shaking his head. “I fall asleep and my chest glows with this light, apparently, and then I’m just… there, in someone else’s head.”

Bev goes pale. “The light — is it the Deadlights?”

“I don’t know.”

A seasoned supernatural investigator, Mike asks, “Is it specific people’s minds, or is it random?”

Eddie blushes like a hormonal middle schooler, red and blotchy, his mouth falling open wordlessly, and Richie’s right there with him, his cheeks so hot he feels like he might spontaneously combust. Eventually Eddie clears his throat and averts his eyes. “Uh, well. It’s sort of… just been… Richie.”

Silence falls over the table again. It makes Richie twitchy, and Eddie’s palm goes clammy against his own.

“Huh,” Bev says, and the vagueness of her tone gnaws at Richie. “Is that— I mean, do you think that there might be a reason why you’ve only experienced this with Richie?”

Eddie’s brows draw together, his gaze firmly rooted to the table top. “Um. Well. Maybe.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, Richie’s been right next to me every time.”

Bev graciously lets that one slide without comment. “So maybe it’s a proximity thing, then?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Eddie says. His expression grows pinched and tight after a moment, though, and his fingers clench around Richie’s. He opens and closes his mouth a couple times, working himself up to something. Richie squeezes his fingers back, and Eddie takes in a quick breath and says, “Or maybe it’s because… because Richie and I are… romantically involved.”

The table goes quiet for a moment, and then Richie can’t help it: he snorts. Eddie turns and blinks at him, the anxiety in his eyes morphing sharply into disbelief. “I’m sorry, it’s just— ‘romantically involved?’” Richie says. “You’re such an uptight little businessman. Are we putting brunch on the company card?”

Eddie scowls at him and rips his hand out from under Richie’s to jab a painful knuckle into the meat of his thigh, just like he used to when they were kids. Richie would feel warm with the memory if a bruise wasn’t blooming quick and painful under his skin. “And how exactly am I _supposed_ to say it, asshole?” Eddie demands.

He hums thoughtfully. “Maybe ‘because we’re in love with each other,’” he says, and he watches as Eddie’s eyes go warm and soft. “Or ‘because we’re bangin’ on the reg.’”

Eddie’s expression goes flat. “You’re such a dick.”

He nods. “It’s on my birth certificate and everything.”

Eddie huffs, exasperated. “You’ve been making that joke since we were ten, Rich. Call up whatever twenty-something Nickelodeon has-been writes your sets and ask them for some new material already.”

Richie drops his chin into his hand and smiles at him moonily. “You’re so sweet on me.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but a smile twitches warmly at his mouth.

“Jesus.”

Richie startles and his eyes snap to Ben, remembering that they were just in the midst of a very serious conversation with their childhood friends.

“Sorry,” Ben says, his mouth twitching like a dying fish. It’s highly unattractive. “It’s just– I thought you guys were insufferable when we were kids. _This_, though? Torture.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Eddie snarks. “Like you and Bev haven’t been drilling cavities into our teeth with all your lovey-dovey handholding shit.”

Ben just looks pointedly where Eddie and Richie’s hands have drifted back together on top of the table. Eddie flips him off.

A hand claps Richie on the shoulder and he turns to see Bill looking at him with a happy warmth in his eyes. “We’re happy for you,” he says, and Richie feels his heart shudder. Bill’s eyes slip past him to Eddie. “For both of you.”

“Thanks, man,” Richie says, voice soft. It’s hard for him to reconcile the all-consuming fear he’d lived in as a kid, terrified of this exact moment, with the kind, happy smiles on his friends’ faces. He takes in a shaky breath, trying to keep the collapse of decades’ worth of anxiety happening inside him from spilling outwards. “So this, uh– this isn’t weird for you guys? Me and Eddie?”

Bev looks at him with a pitying kindness in her eyes, like he’s one of those deer that’s really cute but has the IQ of a rock. “No, Rich. It isn’t weird.”

“We want you both to be happy,” Mike says. “And if that means spending the rest of your days bickering at each other, then so be it.”

Eddie laughs beside him, the sound thick with tears. Richie isn’t much better — his throat quivers around the flood of emotions steadily rising through him. He’s never felt such an overwhelming surge of relief before. He tries to tamp it down, to force it back like he always does, but decades of repression have left him weak and vulnerable to warmer emotions. Tears spill over his cheeks and a sob tumbles of him, and then he’s crying over a plate of eggs and sausage in the middle of a half-full buffet.

Eddie wraps himself around him and runs a soothing hand up and down his arm. He doesn’t say anything or try the shush him like an infant, and being known and understood like that just makes Richie cry harder.

Bill lays his hand back on Richie’s shoulder and squeezes. “I’m sorry you had to go through this alone,” he says, his voice heavy with heartache. “I’m sorry you couldn’t tell us back then.”

Richie rubs his nose against the back of his hand and tries to collect himself. “It was the time and the place, man,” he says, lifting up his glasses and brushing away the tear trails on his skin. “I could barely be honest with myself about it.”

Eddie’s quiet beside him. “I couldn’t even do that.”

Richie turns to look at him and grasps his hand, threading their fingers together. Eddie’s eyes are sad and distant, but he gives him a small smile.

Richie sniffs and collects himself, settling his glasses back into place. He looks at the faces of all his friends and feels the warm weight of Eddie’s palm against his own. It gives him the little nudge he needs. “Whatever’s happening with Eddie,” he says, voice firm and steady, “it isn’t anything to do with Pennywise. He hasn’t tried to hurt me, and there’s been nothing to suggest that this state he goes into is malicious in any way. I think it’s just an unforeseen side effect of, you know, being brought back to life by a bunch of ghosts.”

“That’ll do it,” Bev says shakily, going for humor and missing the mark. Her face is pale.

“What do you think, Eddie?” Mike asks.

Richie turns to him and finds his face pinched with thought and uncertainty. “I don’t know,” he says. “I mean, I don’t feel _evil_ when it’s happening —I don’t have any urges.”

Richie colors at his choice of words.

Mike takes Eddie’s response in, his expression going curious and contemplative. “Do you feel like these dreams are trying to tell you something, or trying to push you to do anything?”

“I—” Eddie blinks rapidly. “I don’t know? Maybe. I’d sort of just assumed they were random, but… I guess it makes sense if they weren’t.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I, um.” He averts his eyes and his face nearly purples with how furious his blush is. Richie feels his stomach fall out from under him. “I don’t know if I can, um…”

Bev reaches over and lays her hand on top of Eddie’s. “Try,” she says. She gives him a gentle smile.

Eddie looks at her and away again, blinking down at the bowl of oatmeal in front of him. He takes in a deep, trembling breath. “I… I really wanted to tell Richie how I felt about him, ever since I saw him again at Jade of the Orient. But things were so complicated and I couldn’t work up the nerve and then everything happened in the cave.” The whole table seems to go white at that, a shudder passing through them all. “Then the dreams or visions or whatever started and it made everything simpler. It was like… like the universe was telling me secrets so I could put them to good use.”

They’re all quiet for a moment, and then Bill says, “That doesn’t sound like It to me.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Ben says, a sweet smile on his face.

Richie’s whole body unclenches. “So are we okay?” he asks, hearing the overeagerness in his voice and not giving a damn. “Can Eddie be released from parole now?”

Bill looks at him with a heavy sort of love in his face. “It’s only been a few days, Rich,” he says gently. Richie tries valiantly not to give into the immediate rush of doom that pours into him. “I’m not saying I don’t trust you, or that I don’t trust Eddie, but… I l-love you both so much, and I couldn’t handle it if after everything we’ve g-gone through…” Bill’s words bite themselves off. He stares down at his hands, his brows drawn tightly together. Mike reaches out and lays a hand on his arm. Bill’s eyes meet Richie’s. “Just… just look out for each other. And p-promise you’ll tell us if something happens, so we can work through it t-together.”

Richie stares at him for a moment before wrapping him up in a hug. Bill huffs out a laugh, thick with emotion, and hugs him back.

“We promise,” Richie murmurs.

Bill pulls back and looks at them for a moment before nodding. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Richie grins.

Eddie’s fingers squeeze around his like a twitch. Richie turns to look at him and finds him staring dumbly at his coffee. Richie fights back the terrified swoop in his stomach and slides a hand around his neck to pull him in and press a kiss against his temple. Eddie blushes again but smiles at him, the wrinkles smoothing out of his forehead. Richie takes in the slight glaze to his eyes and the minute trembling of his hand and knows in the way he’s always known Eddie that he’s overwhelmed and trying to process it all. He squeezes Eddie’s palm to let him know he’s there for him and turns to the others after Eddie’s lips turn up at the corners.

“So can we eat now?” he asks. “Because cold eggs don’t really do it for me.”

“Maybe if you add some salt they’ll be more edible,” Eddie says, quiet but himself, mocking Richie’s words from dinner the other night.

“I think my tears were salty enough.”

Bev snorts and Mike throws his napkin at him.

It’s a pretty fantastic brunch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> um so dersedaises (the_tinywitch on instagram) did the loveliest thing ever and drew the dancing scene from chapter seven and literally lit my soul ablaze????? please go feast your eyes (https://www.instagram.com/p/B3YUOMNlmS-/) i'm still not over it
> 
> in other news i am very happy to be back writing this i've missed these fools


End file.
